Political commentator Ash Sarkar not only dropped facts about billionaire Britain on BBC Question Time, she also exposed the con that is privatisation of essential services.

Ash Sarkar: the “failed experiment”

First, Sarkar took down the corporate robbery of privatisation via new figures from Common Wealth:

200 billion pounds of our money has been paid out to shareholders for privatised utilities like rail and mail and energy and buses and stuff of that nature. That’s money that could have gone into reducing customers bills or investing in infrastructure. It hasn’t. It’s gone out in the form of shareholder profit.

The thinktank revealed in September that key utilities that Margaret Thatcher largely privatised have paid £200bn to shareholders since the 1990s.

Common Wealth noted:

Families using essential services have been turned into cash cows for international investors. Privatisation picked our pockets and sold our wallets back to us.

On Question Time, Sarkar continued:

Or if you look at social care, which is really the monster under the bed whenever you look at any local authoritiy’s budget, the role of private equity is disgusting. So nearly a quarter of foster placements and children’s residential homes are run by companies backed by private equity and they’re looking for profit margins of about 20% or more. So it’s hugely expensive for local authorities and that money isn’t going into workers wages. It’s going into private equity. So the first thing we need to do is admit that privatisation has been a failed experiment. It has cost this country dearly and it is an experiment that needs to end.

The Novara Media journalist is quite right. In the five years until 2023, private equity doubled its role in children’s social care homes. And the profit extraction is also happening to foster children. The top three firms overseeing foster children services made combined profits of £40m in 2023. As Sarkar notes, this is “disgusting”: profit making from placing children in care incentivises increasing the number of children in foster care.

It’s a huge issue. Private agencies profit from homes for around one third children in foster care. And local government is footing the bill, which drives up council tax. One review found that private firms charge 92% more than local authorities pay for in-house provision.

Billionaire Britain

Ash Sarkar then followed through with her priorities on Question Time:

So there are 50 families in the UK who have more wealth than 50% of this country combined. And half of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance. It comes from hoarding property and it comes from finance. So we’re not talking about businesses that employ people. We’re not talking about socially productive uses of capital. We’re talking about hoarding things

Back in May, the Equality Trust found that the UK’s 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the entire population. That means through work-based (where possible, and until automation) redistribution half the country could have 50% more money than they do now, for instance. And that’s with those 50 families keeping half their wealth, and staying very rich indeed. This is why progressive economists and politicians are campaigning for a wealth tax of 1-2%, to gradually rebalance the economy.

The situation is less complex than corporate propagandists make out. Inequality and privatisation are grotesque, yet the current government is doing sweet FA about it.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

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