Caitlin Moran on the simultaneous rise of billionaires and collapse of consumer confidence, what this means for satire, and what her week contained besides this
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
More Billionaires, Gloomier Consumers: The British Paradox of the Moment
Two things are happening simultaneously in Britain that I keep putting next to each other in my head because they belong next to each other even though the people who write about them tend to put them in separate sections of the newspaper. Britain’s billionaire count is rising. British consumers are the gloomiest since 1978. These are not unrelated facts. They are the same fact described from two different positions in the economy, and the relationship between them is the central political and economic question of the moment, and the reason it does not always get treated that way is that the people who ask the economic questions and the people who are experiencing the gloomy consumer confidence often live in different postcodes and attend different events and read different newspapers.
The billionaire count rises when asset prices rise. Asset prices rise when interest rates are low, when quantitative easing pumps money into financial markets, and when economic conditions favour capital over labour. Consumer confidence falls when wages stagnate, when inflation erodes real purchasing power, and when the goods and services people need to live — housing, energy, food — become more expensive relative to income. The current period has produced both things simultaneously, which means that the economic conditions that have made some people very significantly richer have simultaneously made many people feel significantly poorer.
What Satire Does With This
Satire’s job, when it is doing its job properly, is to make this visible. Not to be angry about it — anger is editorial — but to put the two facts next to each other in a form that makes their relationship undeniable. The Onion Test that I apply to satirical premises: would this headline appear in The Onion? “Nation’s Billionaires Celebrate Record Year As Citizens Report Worst Mood Since Disco Was Still Relevant.” That is The Onion. That is also Britain in 2026. The gap between them is the gap satire occupies. I am very comfortable in that gap this week. Britain manages its contradictions through irony; the irony is well-supplied. My week was otherwise fine. The contradictions continue. The writing continues.
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