Is “fairness” the new placebo of politics?

Politicians need to stop pandering to our childish instincts to moan about ‘unfairness’.
Of all the catchphrases and buzzwords in the politician’s formidable arsenal of platitudes, talk about ‘fairness’ is overwhelmingly the favourite in these times. One doesn’t need to look too far to find evidence of this ‘fairness’ epidemic. The Liberal Democrats are committed to ‘fair’ votes; the Conservatives assure us public spending cuts and tax rises will be done ‘fairly’ and Labour, of course, promised a tantalising utopia of ‘a future fair for all’. The disagreeable thing about the proliferation of ‘fairness’ is precisely that it is just so agreeable. Where people might take issue with detailed policies about spending cuts or the values driving, or in some cases inhibiting, those cuts, very few would disagree with a plan to reduce the deficit that’s categorically ‘fair’. Overuse and lack of clarity has stripped the term of any utility it once might have had, as bitter pills are deliberately sugar coated with delicious ‘fairness’. In doing so, politicians are able to couch their potentially contentious ideological motivations in the agreeable, sunshine and rainbows rhetoric of ‘fairness’.

When it comes to fairness we usually all have our own self-interest at heart. In the absence of detail, we automatically interpret the many assurances of ‘fairness’ in a way that conforms to our individual sense of what that should be. A perfect illustration of this is the recent furore over child benefits. When the fantasies of fair cuts were rudely shattered by the painful reality of exactly what these would entail, there was predictable backlash. Many married couples earning just over £40,000 failed to see the fairness in a reduction of their benefits when their co-habiting neighbours earning £80,000 remained unaffected. Similarly, a perfectly legitimate case will no doubt be put forward in these very pages that Lord Browne’s controversial plans to lift the cap on tuition fees is unfair to students. It is doubtful, though, whether the hard pressed taxpayer, faced with the prospect of continuing to subsidise the higher education of even the wealthiest of students, will as readily join in the chorus of condemnation reverberating throughout Student Unions across the country.

The scale of the anger towards policies touted as ‘fair’ is understandable when you consider the different assumptions and values lurking behind its various definitions. Last week the Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report entitled ‘How Fair is Britain?’ The report hopes to set the “agenda for fairness” for the government and details in over 700 pages the need to “close significant equality gaps”. For those not wishing to read the equivalent of War and Peace, only with tales of national heroism replaced with income deciles, the report can be summarised thus: Britain has become a land of greater opportunity over the last fifty years, though glaring gaps in income between the poorest and the richest still exist. The implicit assumption behind the report is that the fair society towards which we strive would not tolerate discrepancies such as the net wealth of the top ten percent of households being valued at one hundred times more than the poorest ten percent. The underlying assumption is that the closer we come to equality of outcome, the fairer our society will be.

This contrasts noticeably with David Cameron’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference in which he defined fairness as “giving people what they deserve – and what people deserve depends on how they behave.” These values are being put into practice through welfare reform, which will ensure that even the lowest paid job will be more eligible than unemployment. Although these measures are supported by the majority of the population, they are unlikely to tick many boxes on the EHRC’s “agenda for fairness”. In the debate about the scale and speed of public spending cuts, which will undoubtedly be the defining argument of the next five years, the concept of ‘fairness’ has become ideologically charged.

There is a gulf, then, between the public’s understanding of what they consider to be fair and the reality behind what is actually meant when it is mentioned by politicians. The reaction to the Browne Report and the plan to scrap child benefit are recent examples of this and accusations of ‘unfairness’ will continue to abound once the Comprehensive Spending Review is unveiled. In the current climate of prostration before the altar of ‘fairness’, its constant evocation is at best confusing and at worst misleading and deceptive. Instead of attempting to soothe us with platitudes about ‘fairness’, it would be infinitely preferable for some refreshing honesty about the real values and motivations behind the plans for cuts. It’s only fair.