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To a greater extent than ever before, the richer and poorer of Britain do not live, work – or shop – in the same places
Where there's muck there's brass, and where there's misery there's usually a few bob too. At the weekend, Steve Smith, founder of the original Poundland empire, was profiled in the People as he launches a new online version of the chain he sold for £50m in 2002. He offers a heartwarming if hackneyed tale of rags to riches – the son of a market trader and self-identifying Del Boy who hit on a winning idea, and succeeded through hard work and determination. Under its current multinational ownership, Poundland turns over a billion pounds a year.
It is a measure of the demand for knock-down value stores that it was reported that a near-riot broke out at a 99p shop in Wrexham on Monday, when police had to be called to control an angry mob of shoppers when a half-price sale, offering everything for 50p, was suddenly halted.
It would be easy but foolish to read too much into reports of violent disorder. Competitive shopping is one of the more popular martial arts in the modern world, and practised by warriors of all classes and backgrounds, whether the prize is a designer gown in the January sales, a new gadget from the Apple store or a basketful of cheap cleaning products and plastic toys. Nonetheless, there is something rather heartbreaking in the details from Wrexham. Tempers flared, unsurprisingly, after people had queued for up to two hours to save a few quid – only to be told the sale was over. Wherever George Osborne's proudly proclaimed recovery is under way, one senses it is not in north Wales.
The spectacular success of pound shops in recent years is just one front in what could be called the poverty economy. The retail recession that brought down so many familiar mid-range high street names proved a boom time not only for this industry but for the likes of Primark, budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl, payday loan companies such as Wonga, and modern pawnshops like Cash Generator where the flatscreen TVs and other transient totems of the real Benefits Street enter and exit a dismal revolving door.
What these businesses have in common is that they offer short-term savings that often come at enormous long-term costs. The mechanism is obvious with a payday loan or a second-hand telly bought on the never-never, but ultra-cheap shops inevitably sell a lot of ultra-crap products, which soon need to be replaced. That is not your prime consideration when you only have a few pounds in your pocket and need a new mop today. The environmental costs should not be forgotten either. A few years ago, it was revealed that a Poundland in York, a mile from the Nestlé factory, was importing Polo mints from Indonesia. The human tragedy of manufacturing cheap garments in countries like Bangladesh should be remembered.
Then there is the social and cultural cost in the UK. Notwithstanding the occasional story about a professional footballer in Poundland, or periodic column-fillers about the middle classes swooping on Aldi to snap up a well-reviewed claret, what the poverty economy represents is an ever-widening gap between society's poor and the rest, the inequality described so eloquently by Will Hutton this week.
To a greater extent than ever before, the richer and poorer of Britain do not live or work in the same areas, they do not shop in the same shops, the lifestyle and culture of each becomes ever more remote, ever more difficult for the other to comprehend or empathise with. While shoppers at Waitrose grumble about free coffee attracting the wrong class of clientele, those in the 99p store queue all afternoon for 50p toothpaste. The consequences can only be a collapse in social cohesion and solidarity. It fosters prejudice and hostility towards the notions of collective wellbeing with potentially devastating impacts upon support for the welfare state and the NHS.
This is not to say the success of Poundland is responsible for the privatisation of the NHS. It is of course a symptom, not a cause, of divided Britain. However, it does illustrate how the dynamics of division and inequality create their own momentum – austerity and hardship creating the conditions that make further hardship almost inevitable. The reality is that discount stores represent a lifeline to many Britons who otherwise would not be able to afford many of the most basic necessities of life. That is our tragedy.