Toddlers know what ‘fair’ means. Do politicians?

Two words have been everywhere touted during this political season: ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’.

Two words have been everywhere touted during this political season: ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. By the time you read this, after Wednesday’s comprehensive spending review, occurrences of the first will have reached epidemic proportions. Let us examine both.

Among Western nations an understanding has dawned that our long-established global economic preponderance is floundering; so we can afford less of the luxury of concern for the weakest in society, a drag on economic competitiveness. From the French revolution’s trio of goals, égalité is being quietly dropped. The left will not wholly forsake what has become for them an almost sacrosanct word, if not idea; so they are effecting a quiet shift from equality pure-and-simple, to ‘equality of opportunity’, which appears to mean that everyone should at least get an equal start.

As a useful guide to policy, ‘equal opportunity’ crumbles on inspection.