The world’s 12 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity.

If we’re pondering the failure of mainstream politics, we can stop right there.

That fact comes from Oxfam’s Global Inequality Report. Oxfam has much more to say – that in the UK, 56 individuals hold more wealth than 27 million people combined; that this monstrous concentration of wealth is accelerating; that billionaires use their unimaginable riches to buy politicians and legal firepower, influence governments, and control social media platforms, something with we which we are all depressingly familiar – but the single fact alone that a tiny number hoard inordinate wealth while huge numbers struggle explains why liberal democracies are in turmoil. Governments often seem powerless to prevent this catastrophic unfairness.

Billionaires’ excessive wealth used to be the stuff of NGO press releases and party conference fringe meetings, concerning but far from an existential crisis. But over the last five years, as voter distress and disillusionment have steadily increased, it’s become a subject of growing anxiety in the political mainstream. Rachel Reeves’ rigid adherence to fiscal red lines in fear of the bond markets, in spite of the need for greater investment in public services, and the SNP’s reluctance to use government tax powers any further in spite of a £5bn budget deficit, underline the limits of democratic power to make the economy work for people, regardless of the UK’s overall wealth.

It’s often said that poverty is a political choice in a country as wealthy as the UK, but how do governments claw back the obscene wealth of billionaires to make........

© Herald Scotland