The Spectator’s Notes | 30 June 2007

Harriet Harman seems to have won the deputy leadership of the Labour party by saying she did not want people to spend £10,000 on a handbag when other people were ‘struggling’. Polly Toynbee tells us that this ‘resonated with public distaste’ at the ‘debauchery of riches at the top’. Did it? If so, why? A handbag that costs £10,000 involves a lot of work by a lot of people, all of whom need to earn a living and most of whom — those rearing the animal which produces the leather, those slaughtering the animal, those tanning the leather, etc. — will not be rich. They will profit, and take pride in a job well done. Besides, if I were a woman with £10,000 to spare, I would love to have a nice posh handbag, and wouldn’t think I was being ‘debauched’ at all. I once ‘struggled’, as Ms Harman puts it, and paid roughly that sum for a pair of guns, and I suspect that the pleasure in a lovely bag, allowing for the sex difference, is comparable.