5: Inequality and Lifelong Learning

Britain suffers from inequality of income, wealth, and geography. The inequality in income and wealth increased during the Thatcher years of the 1980s, and still hasn’t been reversed, despite 13 years of Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. Since that time, wealth has grown more than income (Bell, 2024), exacerbating the problem for the majority of the population who rely on income rather than wealth for their standard of living.

Inequalities of geography have been getting worse in Britain inexorably since the active regional policies of Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s were run down over time. The Johnson government was elected in 2019 with the promise of ‘levelling up’, but the funding made available was largely for relatively short-term projects that had to be bid for, rather than being the sort of long-term regional policies that are required. Consequently, the promise was not fulfilled. Regional inequalities remain as bad as when that government was elected.