Levelling Down

“Has he given up his money?” Sir Leonard asked scornfully.

“Not a bit of it! You’re not abreast of the times, dad. Socialism doesn’t mean levelling down, it means levelling up. Robert is waiting for them to level up!”

Vernon Loder – Death in the Thicket (1932)


It’s slightly odd to encounter a quote on levelling up from over ninety years ago. At the time it was a rhetorical response to conservative jibes that socialism was levelling down.

Even odder is a modern Conservative government making this old and weak rhetorical defence of socialism into government policy.