Shy toffs, trusting tweets and London rising from the flames

Morning all,

An eerie calm will descend over RF towers over the next couple of weeks as politicians up sticks and decamp to their respective conferences. Honourable mention to the Lib Dems, who should have already slept off their hangovers. I’ll be manning the fort in SW1, but we’ll be hosting conversations at both the Labour and Conservative party conferences, in case you’re able to drop in.

This week, we’re looking at train tickets, the Great Fire of London, and the great British 1 per cent.

Have a great weekend,

Mike

Interim Chief Executive
Resolution Foundation

Skewed sanctions. Having written recently about a study that was positive about DWP support, it’s important to highlight a less impressive set of statistics. At any one time, about 1 in every 16 Universal Credit (UC) recipients is being sanctioned – meaning that they didn’t comply with one of the conditions attached to receiving UC. The latest release of benefit sanctions statistics shows stark differences between ethnicities. As highlighted by the Guardian here, black claimants of Universal Credit were 58 per cent more likely to be sanctioned ­than white claimants, and those from mixed ethnic backgrounds were 72 per cent more likely. This could be because different types of UC recipients face different conditions (depending on whether they have children, for example), but the amount of variation between ethnicities raises concerns that the DWP should not ignore.

Exorbitant expeditions. Pointing out the absurd prices for British rail travel, perhaps contrasted with the price of a domestic flight, is a well-trodden trope. But you might know less about the cost of a commute by train versus car. Hannah Ritchie’s substack – is it cheaper to drive, fly, or take the train?  – has you sorted. Analysing a pilot in Scotland which scrapped “peak time” train fares, Hannah has some great charts that show this made train travel cheaper than car travel for those commuting from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The bad news is the pilot has been scrapped: it needed passenger numbers to rise by 10 per cent to be self-financing, but only hit just under 7 per cent. But even when peak fares were scrapped, electric cars were still considerably cheaper than the train, in part because they don’t pay any fuel duty (hence the need for road pricing). This isn’t great for congestion, an issue we’ll be looking to address in upcoming research.

Ephemeral elites. Last week saw the publication of Born to Rule, which examines the British elite since the 1890s, asking whether the Etonian chumocracy has been replaced by meritocratically elevated progressives. Authors Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves crunch the numbers on 125,000 Who’s Who entries to look at the enduring power of the top nine fee-paying schools. But what fascinated me is how British elites present themselves.  Simplifying hugely, your typical Victorian and Edwardian toff emphasised pastimes that required land and money (think: hunting or shooting). By the 1920s, the done thing was to claim to possess a rarefied cultural palette (opera, poetry, arts). But the late twentieth century elite is much more likely to deflect or elide their own privilege, claiming to have had a normal upbringing and identifying with everyday pursuits like hiking, liking beer and pizza, and spending time with their families. This image management preserves their reputation with the wider population – we feel less resentment towards someone who has “earned” their wealth ­­– but the veneer of ordinariness indirectly helps protect their positions of privilege. There’s far more in this fascinating tome to boil down into one paragraph – give it a read if you get the chance, or check out this public event.

Flame fluctuations. We like to talk a lot about the challenge of living in ‘unprecedented times’, but spare a thought for the denizens of 17^th century London. Their great plague was swiftly followed/ended by a great conflagration. Every child is taught this story but disgracefully the economic impact is barely mentioned. Thankfully, this great historical detour of the Great Fire of 1666 when “London burned to sticks” fills that void. The authors find that the fire had three key effects: markets moved westward (although financial services stayed in the City – plus ça change), wealth inequality fell, and poorer families stayed outside the City due to the high cost of returning – and building a home that met new fire-safety requirements. The flames marked a moment of abrupt change within the economic and social fabric of London, laying the groundwork for the city we see today.

Following fibbers. You can’t move for misinformation these days. But what affects how likely we are to be taken in? This study asks how the gender of posters (and scrollers) impacts social media users’ gullibility. Overall, we’re all more likely to believe women, *but* men will be more likely to disbelieve posts by female accounts if they’re covering stereotypically male topics. Women do not extend the same scepticism to men – make of that what you will. And while you’re pondering that, why not take a moment to follow Resolution Foundation and me on Bluesky.

Chart of the week

As you’ve probably heard, the Government is keen to kickstart growth. It has got the ball rolling with moves to boost infrastructure spending (via the Green Prosperity Fund, Great British Energy and National Wealth Fund) and planning reform, to help meet its target of building 1.5 million additional homes over the Parliament. New RF research has put some (pun alert) concrete numbers on what these reforms could feasibly achieve GDP-wise. TL;DR – a chunky boost to growth, but not yet enough to make Britain the fastest-growing economy in the G7. But how can the Government get more GDP bang for its buck? Take housing. Simply building more homes will boost GDP (by roughly 0.03 ppts per 60,000 additional homes). But if you want to maximise growth you would ideally build them in the right place – in highly productive places and cities with untapped growth potential. This would allow workers to access housing in areas with high-productivity jobs (hello Cambridge), and encourage firms to co-locate in high-productivity clusters (hello Leeds). But as COTW shows, the Government’s new mandatory housing targets are focused more on unaffordable areas than highly productive ones. Sure, this definition of unaffordable covers places like London, but it also captures Sheringham and Cromer on the North Norfolk coast. There may be good reasons for doing this. But if it means (currently rather affordable) cities like Birmingham and Manchester missing out on the new homes they desperately need to entice new workers and firms, then the Government might want to consider tilting the targets a little to deliver even more on the economic growth front.