How to build a public and political consensus for a fairer Britain
Fair Comment is a free weekly newsletter by Will Snell, Chief Executive of the Fairness Foundation. It is written for anyone who is interested in tackling inequalities in the UK, whether they are a politician, a researcher, a campaigner, a policymaker, a journalist, or in any other field. It’s designed to help them to make the moral, political and economic case for tackling inequality, with a particular focus on philosophy, public attitudes, and the evidence base on both the problems and the solutions. It is a mixture of comment articles and summaries of reports and events.
Giving workers a bigger say in how their pensions are run
Our new report explains why electoral turnout is a fairness issue, and how to fix it
Can a framework that disaggregates wealth inequality into three aspects help build consensus on the harms that it causes, and ultimately on what to do about it?
My book launched last week. Here are the most interesting challenges to the ideas from the launch event, and how I’d respond to them.
Removing elite influence from our politics requires the imposition of a cap on party donations
This month, we asked the hard questions about wealth and power, exploring the systemic barriers that hold us back from taking more meaningful action to address wealth inequality.
Jack Jeffrey argues that we need to revitalise a ‘politics of national preference’
What it will take for the Burnham government to build a fairer Britain
Taxing wealth has to be part of our response to wealth inequality, but we also need to spread wealth wider at source and put 'guardrails' in place to minimise the negative spillovers
High levels of wealth inequality are damaging our society, economy and democracy. But these arguments are rarely rehearsed when billionaires are challenged about their wealth, giving them a free pass.
From the billionaire wealth machine of private equity to the tax system’s built-in bias against work, we make the case for making fairness the organising idea of a Burnham government
Why tackling extreme economic inequality will be the defining test of Andy Burnham's government and how he could do it
We've gaslighted ourselves for years into believing that people's life trajectories owe much more to merit than luck. By removing our ability to measure merit, AI will finally put paid to that idea.
Jack Jeffrey interviews Hettie O'Brien about private equity in the UK
From the impacts of extreme wealth at the very top of society, to the experiences of young people navigating an unequal economy, this month we continued to examine how wealth shapes all of our lives.
The Resolution Foundation's Deputy Chief Executive on why the absolute size of wealth gaps matters as much as the relative ones, what extreme wealth does to power, and much more...
Examining what the research suggests that children think about inequality
Why we’re backing the Health Equals campaign for a stronger Health Bill
From lived experience to economic diagnosis to learning from cutting-edge research, this month’s work explored what fairness really looks like, and what it would take to build it
11 insights from the cutting edge of research into how people think about fairness and inequality, from a recent workshop at the University of Bristol
A second guest post by Charlie Chan, Director of United Communities, on the importance of knowing a community from the inside and of working with communities rather than doing things for or to them
Exploring wealth, freedom and lived experience: how Britain's economy shapes who has power, and how policy decisions ripple through real lives
A guest post by Charlie Chan, Director of United Communities, reflecting on her own experience of the real-life impacts of policy decisions
An interview with Brett Christophers, author of 'Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?'
A write-up of a recent joint event with the Policy Lab at University College London about republican political theory, featuring Stuart White, author of 'The Wealth of Freedom'
From Britain's broken political economy to entrenched inequality, this month we tackled the systems shaping who gets ahead in Britain, and how to fix them
Reflections from the parliamentary launch last Thursday of our new report, written by Will Hutton
And a sneak preview of our report by Will Hutton coming out later this week
Our new report shines a light on how the racial wealth gap affects life chances
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, talks to Jason Bunting about how to build a fairer economy in all places
Making the case for a new economic agenda that can tackle wealth extraction, reform our tax system and restore trust in democracy
Our new polling on public attitudes to wealth creation and wealth extraction is out today
In this Saturday Long Read, Will Snell, CEO of the Fairness Foundation, explores how extreme wealth reshapes political power - and what that means for democratic trust.
Our response to the Government's publication of the Representation of the People Bill
Helen Miller, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, talks to Will Snell about how to build a better tax system
A joint post with Mike Lewis at Taxwatch about some concerning HMRC survey data
Examining the powerful forces and vested interests shaping our economy, and how fairness can restore social cohesion
Claire Godfrey, Executive Director of the Balanced Economy Project, talks to Jack Jeffrey about how concentrated corporate power threatens democracy, innovation, and fairness
Government policy sometimes prioritises the wishes of certain groups over the public interest. This is partly driven by unfair influence on decision-making. But what other factors are at play?
Fairness isn’t just a moral ideal. It is one of the civic conditions that makes collective life possible.
Exploring fiscal fairness, political transparency and tax accountability as we wrap up 2025
Building a fairer economy relies on relaxing Whitehall’s grip on tax and spending powers via fiscal devolution
Both fairness and our public finances depend on it (a guest post by Mike Lewis at TaxWatch)
A largely cautious Budget raises questions about how and why bolder ideas for UK tax reform were shelved – not least because the wealthy are clearly not making the contributions that they should be
Jack Jeffrey, Senior Researcher at the Fairness Foundation, argues that progress depends on an honest recognition of the problems with Britain's economic model
Why acknowledging our own good fortune would make the world a better place
Our new report on how extreme wealth inequality contributes to the risk of suicide
Exploring the evidence base for how wealth inequality undermines growth, and what we can do about it, with the Academy of Social Sciences
