Homeowners are locked into dramatically escalating mortgage payments, and rented property is tipped into lucrative Airbnb short lets. There is real social pain behind macro-economic headlines, genuine suffering among those paying rent, struggling in work or in positions of disability. Yet such a troubling scene need not impinge on the expanded ranks of the super affluent. While the majority of people face challenges to their daily living, life for the wealthy may seem more like a kind of luxury advent calendar – each day bringing a new surprise whether it be the shower of unearned cash, the vehicle of offshore wealth innovations or the shiny baubles of the prospect of reducing inheritance tax (as well as the abandonment of a wealth tax by the political left).

The keyword in this toxic, hyper-divided social context is denial, the goal? To build a world that makes it easy to forget the desperation and chaos. This includes a new round of 5-star hotel openings in London, a record-breaking year for sales of homes worth more than £5m and a record year in prospect for super yacht builders. Yet who can morally lay claim to enough fuel to send a personal rocket to space, the use of a mega yacht to amble the Mediterranean, or possession of a string of residences that require unending private jet travel to access them? It may not be long before secretly sponsored piracy is used to challenge these excesses.

The toxicity of inequality today is now played-out in national politics as a series of diversions or refusals that persist until there is no way out from the truth. Something deeper and more destabilising appears to be at work as the parameters of political life, the fog of social media and the sharp work of legal teams fuels an industry of obfuscation working to deny the extent of tax evasion, to defend tax avoidance, to suggest that economic crime is somehow appalling but cannot be challenged. Grand lies, like the idea that the rich will go elsewhere if tax rates rise, are perpetuated most often by those working for them. Underlying this labour to defend inequality and corruption is a deep malaise in social life, while public fatalism has become widespread as a result of its endemic nature. As one elite after another tumbles in public esteem the idea of a common future and work to prepare for it by a more or less cohesive society is undermined at a time when it is most needed.

One of the best antidotes to denial is the dogged pursuit of tax justice – seeking fair contribution from across a, usually nationally defined, community. This may sound somewhat abstract but we must remember that tax receipts (or their absence) determine whether people are able to access core health, education and other public services. This year the Tax Justice Network wrote on this issue to King Charles asking that he set the tone for debates on fair taxation which would ultimately mean the difference between a well-staffed NHS or the parlous state it is currently in. Meanwhile it seems that the British government cares little about fairness or tax avoidance and finds only weasel words to avoid anything approaching action. The idea of the state itself has been so far denigrated by those who lead and manage it that it is no surprise that those with considerable money would prefer to put their money elsewhere. Why give money to a system that offers further tax breaks to the rich while presiding over the collapse of social conditions? But even here things are more complex, with ‘patriotic millionaires’ clamouring to step up and help out.

Naming the system and its functionaries for what they are is critical. But the political right are on to this, proclaiming communist plots for public wifi or social housing, or of a deep state run by leftist elites. It is hard to swallow this kind of provocative analysis at the best of times. But it is again a form of intentional fogging of the lenses we need to see with clarity the kind of country we have become – a country that sees the premature deaths of tenants, stress and anxiety locked into the housing pathways of millions, lack of action on affordable housing and the callous shadow play of immigration policy. A government formed of the rich and those connected to property interests continues to throw favours at those that don’t need them while those desperately trying to stay afloat are left to drown. We will see what 2024 brings, but it would seem naïve to think that things can only get better.