POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Finding Radical Danny

Is the author of Power To The People really that radical?

Author’s image of Danny Sriskandarajah. July 17th, London

A Guardian headline declares Danny Sriskandarajah to be a radical, a radical who left Oxfam to fight for democracy.

The radical who left Oxfam to fight for democracy: ‘Eight men have the same wealth as half the world. Where does this end?’ | Politics | The Guardian

I’m not convinced. Oxfam, Democracy and Radical don’t belong in the same sentence.

Off I go then, to search for this radical Danny.

The same Guardian article tells us,

In his time at Oxfam, Sriskandarajah made the case trenchantly that the existence of billionaires posed an active hazard to the global functioning of civic life.

and Danny, as new head of the New Economics Foundation think tank, declares,

The NEF is working on an “extreme wealth line”: “There’s the extreme poverty line, the line below which it’s socially unacceptable for someone to have to live. Why can’t we have a similar one for the upper limit? A level of net assets that society thinks is problematic? It’s likely to buy you too much influence … It’s a result of policy or market failure.”

If Danny considers glamourising the billionaire class problematic, he’s in the excellent company of Irish economist and podcaster David McWilliams, who has also been known to describe billionaires as evidence of wider economic policy failure.

I’m not sensing radical here. I’m sensing pragmatic leadership. Society’s glorification of extreme wealth and our fawning over obscenely wealthy individuals is a cultural problem. Cultural change is possible, but it starts with honest conversations.

Returning to The Conduit to find Radical Danny

on my way to The Conduit in London

I saw Danny ‘in conversation’ with Dame Julia Unwin a few weeks ago at The Conduit. Let me check my notes for anything radical.

[Checks notes]