The past week has been a tough time to be British and poor. Tens of thousands of Britain’s least well-off have been sent a harsh message by First Direct, one of the country’s biggest banks: “Pay up, or push off.” Earlier, Farepak, a Christmas hamper club in which 120,000 low-income Britons have scrimped all year to save towards family presents and celebration food, collapsed, confronting its clients with the prospect of a bleak festive season.

First Direct’s startling move marked a breaking of ranks with the rest of the high street banking industry. The online arm of HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, said that customers would be hit by a £10-a-month fee on basic current accounts if they failed to either keep a £1,500 balance or pay in at least that amount each month, something that requires earnings of at least £24,000 a year.

The Farepak debacle did nothing to bring festive cheer to the country’s poorest, either. One observer dubbed it “A Christmas Carol for modern times”. They might as well have spoken of “A tale of two Britains”, for both this and the First Direct affair have thrown a spotlight on the growing extremes of wealth and income inequality in a two-tier nation. For the swelling legions of Britain’s mass affluent, it may well be the best of times; it is possible to say that they have never had it so good. Yet, while it is far from the worst of times for Britain’s poorest, “hard times” is still a pretty fair description.

Gordon Brown may hail the longest period of continuous economic growth in modern times, but official figures still confirm that, in the early years of this decade, some were not sharing equally in the proceeds of this rising prosperity.

In both 2002 and 2003, the Department for Work and Pensions’ own figures show that disposable incomes (after taxes and housing costs) for the poorest 10 per cent of households actually fell. This was the only section of society in which this happened. The startling trend reinforced a widening gap between the richest and the poorest. By 2004-05 the poorest tenth of households had disposable incomes of just £91 a week, against £820 a week for the richest tenth.

The divergence of households’ fortunes was emphasised still further last week by a report highlighting how the ranks of Britain’s rich are growing. Datamonitor, the market analyst, projected that the number of Britons with more than £200,000 in liquid assets will rise above a million next year and reach 1.34 million by the end of the decade.

It is important to keep these developments in perspective. Britain is, in fact, mirroring a global trend towards rising income inequality in industrial countries — and to a lesser extent than in many of these countries. Worldwide, the trend is so pronounced that Paul Donovan, of UBS, the investment bank, was moved to begin a recent analysis by quoting the First World War army song: “It’s the same the whole world over/ It’s the poor wot gets the blame/ It’s the rich wot gets the gravy/ Ain’t it all a bleedin’ shame.”

UBS’s research, and work by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, make clear that income inequality in Britain has risen far less sharply than in countries such as the United States. If the population is split into fifths, from the poorest to the richest, incomes have risen more or less equally, so that inequality has hardly moved at all since 1997 — after a sharp increase in the 1980s.

Yet, as the Government’s own figures confirm, it is at the extremes — the richest and poorest tenths of the population — that financial inequality is growing again.

For the poorest, the picture looks bleaker still if we consider that the adverse trends are magnified by the effects of both prices, and the social repercussions of being among the country’s most badly off.

It is a costly time to be poor, because the poorest spend more of their limited incomes on such items as food and fuel, for which prices have surged. In real terms, the squeeze on their incomes is amplified by the higher inflation they suffer. At the same time, the least well-off also confront social pressures — with the poorest areas, for example, registering the highest crime rates — meaning dearer insurance premiums. There are already signs that the financial gulf dividing Britain will fuel intensified debate. The Commons Treasury Committee has this month published two reports demanding better access for the poor not just to banking services, but to savings vehicles and financial advice.

If Mr Donovan is right, present trends suggest that the forces leading to more income inequality in industrial nations are set to grow stronger. “Off-shoring” of services, and the huge pool of low-skilled but cheap workers in Asia who have joined the global labour force, will keep up pressure on the earnings of the unskilled in nations such as Britain. Globalisation means, too, that expensive manufactured goods favoured by the rich will continue to get cheaper relative to essentials, so the least well-off will endure a double squeeze.

It is telling that even in the UK, where Mr Brown has pursued stealthy redistribution from rich to poor, income inequality is as great as when Labour came to power. The Chancellor has been running to stand still as headwinds from globalisation blast the poorest.

In Britain, and across the developed world, these trends may push the issue of inequality up the political and business agenda — particularly if, as in the US, these forces strengthen and begin to affect the middle classes, whose votes weigh heaviest in the corridors of power, and whose spending drives the markets of corporate Britain.

Additional reporting by Caroline Merrell

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