My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (7.7.26), intentionally poking a sideways jab at Nigel Farage, his £5million bung from a billionaire, alongside many other dubious “donations” much in the news right now. I was encouraged by a Vox pop 10 second interview with a working class woman on BBC radio, saying “if someone gave me £5 million I’d take it…”, as f anyone was ever going to! Farage says “nothing to see here”, and indeed, his is the tip of iceberg of corruption for which he’s neither the first nor the worst. But he’s a far-right racist bigot, and his corruption should be made an example of, even if he and his followers think there’s “nothing to see here!”. Unbridled vicious Capitalism, very visible indeed.

The unexpurgated version here or read the printed version by expanding the pic below:

One million pounds is a lot of money. £5million is a lot more. Based on current UK tax and National Insurance rules, a worker employed full-time from age 18 to 67 (a 49-year career) will finish with lifetime earnings of just over £1m if they earn the National Minimum Wage, or £1.5m if they earn the average UK median full-time salary. £1million is a working class lifetime. 

The median UK household disposable income (after taxes and benefits) is approximately £37,000. Roughly 30% of UK households share an income below the minimum acceptable standard, well below the national median. Those households never see £1m in their entire lifetime.

And for those of us who earn a million or two in our lives, the fact is it mostly goes out again – we have to spend it all to survive. The lucky minority, investing in property, may accumulate a package by retirement age, much of which will be spent on our own health and social care in our final years, and what’s left may help the next generation. Working class wealth largely depends upon inheritance – it’s far harder to become wealthy and shift up a class by your own efforts.   

If you’re born into wealth, it’s a doozy! An investment of £1m in the UK will earn a return interest of between £30,000 and 75,000 per year, cash, about the same or more than the average income from working. One million pounds is a lot of money. Imagine the investment income of a billionaire (a billion is a thousand millions) or a trillionaire (a million million)!

The above is an explanation of why socialists call the working class “wage slaves”. The employer-class pay us to make money for them, only for us to have to pay them back to be fed (badly), watered (hmm, water companies) and housed (poorly, overall), with little or no personal agency except for a week’s holiday if we scrimp and save. And for this we have to do as we’re told, watch what we say, and serve “The Man”.     

Yet, as President Trump eulogised last week at his, albeit spartan celebration of the founding of the Great USA, the American, nee Capitalist, Dream is a back. The myth that we can all be millionaires is being sold to us again. We should aspire to millionaires, value and adore millionaires.

It’s here in the UK, too. we are expected to believe that millionaires are best placed to lead us and make decisions for us.  Most strangely, the far-Right MPs who receive millions of pounds in “donations” are targeting the poorest in the country for votes and extra-parliamentary support. There is a tradition here dating back to the first working class suffrage of 1867 – the wealthy bought the votes of ordinary men with bribes or jobs or gin. 

In return, MPs were bought by big businessmen seeking legal privileges and a competitive edge. Today, the proportion of multi-millionaire MPs in the House of Commons is over 50%, hidden but assessable, much higher than the population where fewer than 5% are millionaires.

When we read of a single politician, self-publicised as being “anti-Establishment”, receiving £5m from a billionaire and “millions” more from a billionaire convicted felon, his claims of being “a man of the people” must fall far short. Those who support what Trump stands for may argue that we need rich businessmen to run society because they know best how to manage “The System”

This is probably true. But why should we support this “System” that enslaves us? Britain is seen abroad as having one of the most corrupt Establishments in the world. The City of London is joked about as the western world’s laundry, cleaning wealth gained illegally – drugs, people trafficking, prostitution and illegal arms sales. As a direct consequence, the spending power of the working class in England has fallen by 20% since 2008 – when the wholesale corruption of the millionaire bankers and financiers cost us all very dearly. 

MPs routinely receiving bungs weds them to corruption as the condition of the status quo. We should expose and depose every single one of them.