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Welcome to Britain’s Hungry Twenties The young are suffering the most

Child poverty is back. Matt Cardy/Getty Images


March 31, 2023   6 mins

Last spring, Elsie, a 77-year-old widow asked ITV’s Good Morning Britain to solicit any advice that Boris Johnson might have about coping with poverty. It was duly explained to the then-Prime Minister that Elsie only ate one meal a day and passed her hours going round and round on the local bus to avoid turning on the heating at home. Squirming, Johnson said that it was only thanks to his decisions that she enjoyed a freedom bus pass — and jaws dropped nationwide.

Elsie’s tragic tale cut through to the public in a way that statistics could not, despite some of the numbers pointing to a resurgence of almost-Victorian aspects of want. Rough sleeping, for example, has shot up by a quarter in a single year. There has been a “significant decrease” in the average age of death in deprived neighbourhoods. The government’s annual poverty figures have just recorded a million more sinking below the breadline and in the same data, released within 24 hours of the fastest food inflation since 1977, officials for the first time ever deemed it important to tally foodbank use.

And yet even the best-intentioned people can simply glaze over at figure-heavy headlines about Britain’s cost-of-living crisis. But if numbers are prone to being ignored, anecdotes can be unrepresentative. To paint a credible portrait of Britain’s new penury, therefore, we need to grapple with statistical tables and personal stories alike — with the quantity and the quality of poverty. I’ve dedicated the last few months to that, working with reporters who are lending an ear to the communities that many politicians would rather ignore.

They have heard tales of bitter hardship that wouldn’t be out of place in a Charles Dickens novel, or in the reporting of George Orwell and J.B. Priestley. In many ways, Britain’s new poverty is much like the old. The street urchins in Dickens’s London and the impoverished mill workers in Engels’s Manchester would be familiar with many of the experiences described by the testimony collated in Broke. The brute privation some describe — the bite of the cold, the gnawing of hunger, the terror of ending up without a roof over their head — would have been shared by many Victorian Londoners. The shock is to find such conditions resurgent in a post-industrial society incomparably richer than that chronicled by Dickens.

Our society may have grown too wealthy to fear mass undernourishment on a 19th-century scale, but our decade could still, like the 1840s and 1930s, earn the unhappy moniker “the hungry” Twenties. A hundred and fifty years after George Eliot likened poverty to leprosy in Middlemarch, on the basis that “it divides us from what we most care for”, a trip to a Tottenham foodbank reveals how poverty can alienate people from those dearest to them. Yvonne, a 63-year-old former social worker with a degenerative spinal condition, still refuses to let her four adult children know that she is struggling, and so cuts herself off from what should be her support network.

Such hardship gets under an individual’s skin and sometimes breaks the spirit. Staff at a GP practice in a run-down part of Glasgow which features in the book affirm how often such thoughts turn into deeds in their part of the world: overdoses and suicides routinely cut grotesquely short the lives lodged in their books.

Despite continuity with the past in the nature of poverty, a lot of the numbers concerning Britain’s current poverty crisis today are decidedly novel. From the Victorian “poor house” through to the Beveridge report, the problem of poverty in the past was — overwhelmingly — a problem of old age. No longer. Pick a pensioner at random and they are markedly less likely to be in poverty than someone plucked from the general population. In her hardship, Elsie has become the exception, not the rule.

The flipside of ameliorating conditions for older Britons has been tanking fortunes for others. The total number of children growing up under the poverty line, which was falling around the turn of the century after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown vowed to eradicate the problem, is rocketing back to its Nineties peaks. The official tally is now just 100,000 short of the 4.3 million record, and once the rear-view-mirror data catches up with the energy crunch, it could scale shameful new heights. The link to specific cuts is getting starker, too. Take the “two-child policy”, a crude attempt to discourage cash-strapped parents from having kids, driven through soon after the Conservatives won single-party power in 2015, which ends up punishing third and fourth children by denying them support. Sure enough, according to Whitehall’s latest numbers, families with three or more children are now twice as likely to have resorted to foodbanks as their smaller counterparts.

Children aren’t the only ones affected. Disabled people, thanks to cross-party reforms from the Seventies, were rarely doomed to destitution. That is, until recently. Following a series of restrictions and freezes, a colleague and I calculated that single disabled people were roughly four times more likely than the non-disabled to be falling behind with their bills, six times more likely to be growing cold, and nine times more likely to be going hungry.

Given the drift of Britain’s demographics, the “new poverty” is inevitably somewhat more diverse than the old — but it is, perhaps, surprising to learn quite how far it skews. A lot of the political discussion, and a lot of very good reporting, has concentrated on England’s “left behind” coastal towns and ageing industrial towns, both of which tend to be white. But if we just concentrate on the hard finances, rather than a vaguer sense of malaise, all of the country’s main ethnic minority groups still suffer from consistently higher poverty rates than the white majority. For some, like British Indians, the gap is these days small; for others — like Bangladeshis and Black Caribbeans — the excess risk of poverty remains double or more. Meanwhile, for a large and growing band of migrants, the “no recourse to public funds” rule frequently spells automatic destitution.

Another break from the past concerns work. There is a particular irony here, given the way the austerity assault on the welfare state was sold as necessary to safeguard the toiling taxpayer. But the rhetorical binaries between “grafters” and “grifters” are ever-less plausible. Over the 2010s, there was a remorseless rise in the relative weight of working poverty: setting pensioners aside, less than half of poor adults lived in a “working household” back in the mid-Nineties; that same proportion steadily rose to 68% by 2019-20.

Can the poverty tide be reversed? We could learn from past success. Pulling the elderly out of poverty did not happen by accident: the change was the result of both successful social policy choices (including controversial means-tested support) and supportive private institutions (notably workplace pensions). There are questions about how sustainable the settlement is, and indeed pensioner poverty is just starting to creep back up. It’s also true that special political factors — a large and growing electorate of pensioners who reliably turn out to vote — helped unlock higher public spending in this field after the Turner Commission reported in 2005.

But these caveats should not distract us from remains an almighty, historic triumph. We should pore over the progress on pensioner poverty, and figure out how to replicate it. Many activists exhibit a weakness: the “despondency problem” sharply defined by the Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond as being “fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair”. To shrug off the ancient belief that poverty is inevitable, and build faith in change, we must shout about success where we can point to it.

At the same time, the average voter needs to care about poverty. This isn’t always a given. The uncomfortable truth, as Desmond heavily underlines, is that it flows from a system which in some respects serves the majority’s self-interests: the flipside of gnawing insecurity for gig economy workers is, for example, convenience for the consumers.

But one feature of 21st-century hardship may help the cause: namely, a disturbing sense of the boundary between the supporters and the supplicants of life getting blurred as the big squeeze goes up the income ladder.

UnHerd’s own polling underlines this point, with 62% of Brits now agreeing with the statement: “I worry about affording the necessities, such as food and energy.” When those findings are projected across the political map, every constituency across the land registers at least a modest majority in this position. This is the backdrop to the stories of two women we uncovered in Manchester: Phoebe, an increasingly indebted debt advice worker, who admits she’s too scared to commit her own finances to paper; and Sophie, a foodbank volunteer, who one day found she had no choice but to become a foodbank user.

Such tales are palpably disturbing. But they could also provide a chance to reset the debate. The missing ingredient in Britain’s conversation about poverty has been empathy — the poor are talked of as a different species, away on Benefits Street. As ever-more voters feel the pinch, the mood could change. Newly exposed, the majority might be persuaded to repair the holes that austerity has cut in the safety net. Then perhaps we might make progress towards fixing what is currently broke.


Tom Clark is a contributing editor at Prospect magazine. His latest book is Broke: Fixing Britain’s poverty crisis (Biteback).

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Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago

Thought-provoking and a much needed corrective to assumptions that it is principally white communities that are left behind and that those struggling should just ‘do as Norman says’ and get on their bike. Where’s that high-wage economy the Tories kept promising! As I’ve said before – controversially to most of the commentariat on here – money should mainly be in the hands of those who work for it – *not* those who simply collect it from those who do and then (if you’re the Tories) give billions of it to their friends in exchange for PPE contracts which did nothing for the public.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

The way the modern economy functions now, I believe the scales need to be tipped towards taxing wealth rather than labour. There’s little point taxing workers then having to give money back through benefit top ups, while an ever increasing percentage of the nations treasure is hoarded by an ever decreasing minority at the top

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

And tax land while they’re at it. By God, if ever this country needed a political party on the side of “the many” it’s surely now. Where is the rage? I’d like to think we’ll see it IF Labour win but I’m not optimistic. They don’t seem to get it.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago

What a heartening set of responses above – I was expecting a pile on from the usual suspects telling me that poverty is all relative and we shouldn’t be concerned. I suspect they see the word ‘poverty’ in the title and the children in the picture and know that they have no answers to these bigger problems from which their culture warmongering is a distraction deliberately pedalled by a press that would rather we looked away.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago

What a heartening set of responses above – I was expecting a pile on from the usual suspects telling me that poverty is all relative and we shouldn’t be concerned. I suspect they see the word ‘poverty’ in the title and the children in the picture and know that they have no answers to these bigger problems from which their culture warmongering is a distraction deliberately pedalled by a press that would rather we looked away.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Agreed, but the present system gives “employment” to many (un)Civil Servants so which government is going to “cut-out-the-middleman?”

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Doug Pingel

Yes I’m sure the civil service could be a leaner machine but the point is those employees are at least doing *something* even if it might only be turning up to work (which is a lot of jobs anway I would say). The real parasites here are people who don’t even do that and yet are rewarded hugely – landowners, property magnates etc

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

They may be doing “something”, but there are two reasons why the “something” may not be helpful.
Firstly, sometimes the “something” is actually of negative value to society as a whole. Creating needless new regulations or making things that used to be cheap, easy and fast expensive, difficult and slow is one example. People “turning up to work” certainly creates cost. But is no guarantee of benefits – or profits.
Secondly, there is usually an “opportunity cost”. Assuming that the civil servants might be equipped to do something more productive (we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here), consuming their skills in the civil service can be less beneficial than having them do something else.
The idea that all landowners are parasites and don’t do any work is ludicrous. I think there’s some fallacious zero sum game type thinking going on here.

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

…its not the landowers as such who are the glitch, its certain man-made aspects of ownership. See Henry’s George’s “Poverty and Progress”. There’s a good summary here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

All sensible points!
1) Absolutely. There was a report done by the New Economics Foundation (to whom I’m sure you’re a donor) which calculated the relative damage done by different professions to society, which I think had Marketing Exec in at number one.
2) For sure. Here I was thinking more about the value it has for the employee, on the assumption that some kind of work, provided it bestows a vague sense of ownership and achievement, is preferable to uninterrupted idleness. But as you say there may well be better things for them to be doing. I’m no expert on streamlining possibilities within the civil service, as the government seems to believe there are. I do however, struggle in taking lectures in fiscal efficiency from a group that throws billions of taxpayer money at its friends for no good reason, but perhaps that’s just me.
3) Not all landowners of course! But as BH below me seems to have pointed out, land tax has been argued by Georgists as being the fairest kind since the value of land hardly is hardly ever derived from the work of the owner. You probably know the old parliamentary speech of Churchill’s when campaigning for the People’s Budget in 1909, but for those on here who don’t:
‘streets are made… electric light turns night into day, water is brought from a hundred miles off in the mountains… Every one of these improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist… contribute and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced…he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived’
And when so many people on here seem to think that doctors, teachers and nurses are somehow the real parasites..

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

We do seem to be in agreement !
I don’t see what the objections to Land Tax really are. After all we auction/tax radio spectrum – a communal asset with finite supply. And we will at some point charge for roads. It’s socially desirable for land to be efficiently used. I would far rather we taxed unearned income over earned income. The balance certainly isn’t right today.
I doubt anyone here seriously thinks that doctors, nurses and teachers are parasites. Of course, in any profession there are a small proportion of people who aren’t pulling their weight. But I haven’t met any in these professions.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

Interesting comparison – I suppose the value of a bit of radio spectrum derives more from the fact it’s part of a finite supply (as you say) than any efforts of a community around it, so the case for taxing it is weaker than for land. Labour’s John McDonnell did propose a land tax but it was quickly slammed as a ‘garden tax.’ That said it does exist in the US – I understand that in Pittsburgh it has helped contain suburban sprawl by incentivising more efficient land use.

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

Hold on – I’m not in favour of this because it will contain suburban sprawl. Almost the reverse. If it is properly implemented it should free up land for building decent sized homes. I have nothing against reasonable, well-planned and designed housing. The ridiculous cost of building land and hence housing in the UK is a major problem. As is not taxing the windfall planning value uplift.
In fact, I’d put the ridiculous cost of housing in the UK in the country’s top three problems (perhaps even the top one). It restricts mobility, kills aspiration and cements in hereditary wealth.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

The argument was that containing sprawl improves the efficiency of a city (cutting commuting times etc), but like you my priority is making land cheaper and again like you, I think this is a huge problem (the biggest single driver of poverty in the UK) which has been dwarved by Brexit. And yes the land compensation act, which currently entitles land owners to the full planning uplift value of land at the point of purchase by local authorities, needs to be reformed. I think in many western European countries the planning value uplift goes to local governments.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

The argument was that containing sprawl improves the efficiency of a city (cutting commuting times etc), but like you my priority is making land cheaper and again like you, I think this is a huge problem (the biggest single driver of poverty in the UK) which has been dwarved by Brexit. And yes the land compensation act, which currently entitles land owners to the full planning uplift value of land at the point of purchase by local authorities, needs to be reformed. I think in many western European countries the planning value uplift goes to local governments.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

Hold on – I’m not in favour of this because it will contain suburban sprawl. Almost the reverse. If it is properly implemented it should free up land for building decent sized homes. I have nothing against reasonable, well-planned and designed housing. The ridiculous cost of building land and hence housing in the UK is a major problem. As is not taxing the windfall planning value uplift.
In fact, I’d put the ridiculous cost of housing in the UK in the country’s top three problems (perhaps even the top one). It restricts mobility, kills aspiration and cements in hereditary wealth.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

Interesting comparison – I suppose the value of a bit of radio spectrum derives more from the fact it’s part of a finite supply (as you say) than any efforts of a community around it, so the case for taxing it is weaker than for land. Labour’s John McDonnell did propose a land tax but it was quickly slammed as a ‘garden tax.’ That said it does exist in the US – I understand that in Pittsburgh it has helped contain suburban sprawl by incentivising more efficient land use.

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

We do seem to be in agreement !
I don’t see what the objections to Land Tax really are. After all we auction/tax radio spectrum – a communal asset with finite supply. And we will at some point charge for roads. It’s socially desirable for land to be efficiently used. I would far rather we taxed unearned income over earned income. The balance certainly isn’t right today.
I doubt anyone here seriously thinks that doctors, nurses and teachers are parasites. Of course, in any profession there are a small proportion of people who aren’t pulling their weight. But I haven’t met any in these professions.

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

…its not the landowers as such who are the glitch, its certain man-made aspects of ownership. See Henry’s George’s “Poverty and Progress”. There’s a good summary here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

All sensible points!
1) Absolutely. There was a report done by the New Economics Foundation (to whom I’m sure you’re a donor) which calculated the relative damage done by different professions to society, which I think had Marketing Exec in at number one.
2) For sure. Here I was thinking more about the value it has for the employee, on the assumption that some kind of work, provided it bestows a vague sense of ownership and achievement, is preferable to uninterrupted idleness. But as you say there may well be better things for them to be doing. I’m no expert on streamlining possibilities within the civil service, as the government seems to believe there are. I do however, struggle in taking lectures in fiscal efficiency from a group that throws billions of taxpayer money at its friends for no good reason, but perhaps that’s just me.
3) Not all landowners of course! But as BH below me seems to have pointed out, land tax has been argued by Georgists as being the fairest kind since the value of land hardly is hardly ever derived from the work of the owner. You probably know the old parliamentary speech of Churchill’s when campaigning for the People’s Budget in 1909, but for those on here who don’t:
‘streets are made… electric light turns night into day, water is brought from a hundred miles off in the mountains… Every one of these improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist… contribute and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced…he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived’
And when so many people on here seem to think that doctors, teachers and nurses are somehow the real parasites..

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

They may be doing “something”, but there are two reasons why the “something” may not be helpful.
Firstly, sometimes the “something” is actually of negative value to society as a whole. Creating needless new regulations or making things that used to be cheap, easy and fast expensive, difficult and slow is one example. People “turning up to work” certainly creates cost. But is no guarantee of benefits – or profits.
Secondly, there is usually an “opportunity cost”. Assuming that the civil servants might be equipped to do something more productive (we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here), consuming their skills in the civil service can be less beneficial than having them do something else.
The idea that all landowners are parasites and don’t do any work is ludicrous. I think there’s some fallacious zero sum game type thinking going on here.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Doug Pingel

Yes I’m sure the civil service could be a leaner machine but the point is those employees are at least doing *something* even if it might only be turning up to work (which is a lot of jobs anway I would say). The real parasites here are people who don’t even do that and yet are rewarded hugely – landowners, property magnates etc

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

And tax land while they’re at it. By God, if ever this country needed a political party on the side of “the many” it’s surely now. Where is the rage? I’d like to think we’ll see it IF Labour win but I’m not optimistic. They don’t seem to get it.

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Agreed, but the present system gives “employment” to many (un)Civil Servants so which government is going to “cut-out-the-middleman?”

Kate Madrid
Kate Madrid
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

I’m a Catholic American and was recently playing a game with my sister on a road trip where one of the questions was ‘If you could make one rule what would it be?’. We decided to answer as though there wouldn’t be unintended consequences. It will give you deep insight into the difference between my character and my sister’s to know that her answer was “every little girl gets a pony and little boys too if they want them.” My rule was nobody can use the words fascist, nazi, hitler, left, right, republican, democrat, progressive, liberal, conservative (and I didn’t think to say so at the time but of course Torie and Labour). Now of course this isn’t plausible but it wouldn’t hurt any of us to describe specifically what we are talking about (or at least consider how we would) without having recourse to our usual scapegoat labels. How would you convey what you wrote above without the shorthand of finger pointing?

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Kate Madrid

Thanks for sharing this and for the question. Perhaps your wished-for world also precludes the use of ‘isms,’ but I suppose I’d sidestep the group vilification charge by being (even vaguer you might say) and argue that the political cause (and I know there are social ones, like family breakdown etc) of these problems stems from our transition to neoliberalism in the 1980s (which I understand as the tendency of a government towards intervention which serves the interests of capital rather than those of labour and democracy). In this both Labour and the Conservatives/Tories were complicit (though Labour at least put more of the proceeds back into public services while squirelling less of that money away to private providers and offshore bank accounts).
Now if I’m right, you raise an important question: Doesn’t finger pointing and ‘othering’ those who disagree with us just entrench polarities? Well there are a number of reasons why I went for the Tories in that comment without thinking I’m fuelling a civil war.
First is the tide is turning on the Tories, both nationally and, it seems, among people commenting on here. Anecdotally, many small c conservatives on here don’t seem to have much time for the party either these days (believe me I’m always asking people for good things they think the party has done – if only to cheer myself up about the last 12 years – but often I’m the one who ends up trying to supply the positives).
The second reason is I think there is actually a wide economic consensus (being intentionally stifled by an economically right-wing press intent on keeping us at each other’s throats over cultural issues) based on values most of us can agree upon i.e. that work should pay, should be dignified, should allow us to raise a family, that politicians should represent us and not the interest of big donors, that a state’s responsibility is to the people it governs, not foreign capital. Every criticism of the Tories that I make I frame in these terms, trying to carry as many people along with me.
Lastly, and in the spirit of the article, urging us not only to be ‘fluent in the language of grievance’ but also ‘in the language of repair,’ I think that a government’s solution to these problems relies on identifying the cause and I think that those most culpable are indeed the Tories and that the way out involves a raft of policies – expanding the powers of local councils to buy land, taxing land, strengthening renters’ rights etc – the Tories won’t touch. My focus would be on housing because even the IEA have described the housing crisis as the single greatest driver of poverty in the UK. On this I have a 15,000 word dissertation if you still think this sounds like the shorthand finger pointing.
Of course as a Catholic you might be more attracted to communitarian solutions like co-operatives or community land trusts, which though morally superior perhaps to state intervention, are impotent before the scale of the problem.
Now I’ll wait to see how wrongly I’ve read the room re this economic consensus.. Kudos if you even made it through all this. Also, ‘every little girl gets a pony’ – really?! I prefer your wish.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Kate Madrid

Thanks for sharing this and for the question. Perhaps your wished-for world also precludes the use of ‘isms,’ but I suppose I’d sidestep the group vilification charge by being (even vaguer you might say) and argue that the political cause (and I know there are social ones, like family breakdown etc) of these problems stems from our transition to neoliberalism in the 1980s (which I understand as the tendency of a government towards intervention which serves the interests of capital rather than those of labour and democracy). In this both Labour and the Conservatives/Tories were complicit (though Labour at least put more of the proceeds back into public services while squirelling less of that money away to private providers and offshore bank accounts).
Now if I’m right, you raise an important question: Doesn’t finger pointing and ‘othering’ those who disagree with us just entrench polarities? Well there are a number of reasons why I went for the Tories in that comment without thinking I’m fuelling a civil war.
First is the tide is turning on the Tories, both nationally and, it seems, among people commenting on here. Anecdotally, many small c conservatives on here don’t seem to have much time for the party either these days (believe me I’m always asking people for good things they think the party has done – if only to cheer myself up about the last 12 years – but often I’m the one who ends up trying to supply the positives).
The second reason is I think there is actually a wide economic consensus (being intentionally stifled by an economically right-wing press intent on keeping us at each other’s throats over cultural issues) based on values most of us can agree upon i.e. that work should pay, should be dignified, should allow us to raise a family, that politicians should represent us and not the interest of big donors, that a state’s responsibility is to the people it governs, not foreign capital. Every criticism of the Tories that I make I frame in these terms, trying to carry as many people along with me.
Lastly, and in the spirit of the article, urging us not only to be ‘fluent in the language of grievance’ but also ‘in the language of repair,’ I think that a government’s solution to these problems relies on identifying the cause and I think that those most culpable are indeed the Tories and that the way out involves a raft of policies – expanding the powers of local councils to buy land, taxing land, strengthening renters’ rights etc – the Tories won’t touch. My focus would be on housing because even the IEA have described the housing crisis as the single greatest driver of poverty in the UK. On this I have a 15,000 word dissertation if you still think this sounds like the shorthand finger pointing.
Of course as a Catholic you might be more attracted to communitarian solutions like co-operatives or community land trusts, which though morally superior perhaps to state intervention, are impotent before the scale of the problem.
Now I’ll wait to see how wrongly I’ve read the room re this economic consensus.. Kudos if you even made it through all this. Also, ‘every little girl gets a pony’ – really?! I prefer your wish.

Last edited 1 year ago by Desmond Wolf
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

The way the modern economy functions now, I believe the scales need to be tipped towards taxing wealth rather than labour. There’s little point taxing workers then having to give money back through benefit top ups, while an ever increasing percentage of the nations treasure is hoarded by an ever decreasing minority at the top

Kate Madrid
Kate Madrid
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

I’m a Catholic American and was recently playing a game with my sister on a road trip where one of the questions was ‘If you could make one rule what would it be?’. We decided to answer as though there wouldn’t be unintended consequences. It will give you deep insight into the difference between my character and my sister’s to know that her answer was “every little girl gets a pony and little boys too if they want them.” My rule was nobody can use the words fascist, nazi, hitler, left, right, republican, democrat, progressive, liberal, conservative (and I didn’t think to say so at the time but of course Torie and Labour). Now of course this isn’t plausible but it wouldn’t hurt any of us to describe specifically what we are talking about (or at least consider how we would) without having recourse to our usual scapegoat labels. How would you convey what you wrote above without the shorthand of finger pointing?

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago

Thought-provoking and a much needed corrective to assumptions that it is principally white communities that are left behind and that those struggling should just ‘do as Norman says’ and get on their bike. Where’s that high-wage economy the Tories kept promising! As I’ve said before – controversially to most of the commentariat on here – money should mainly be in the hands of those who work for it – *not* those who simply collect it from those who do and then (if you’re the Tories) give billions of it to their friends in exchange for PPE contracts which did nothing for the public.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago

If we have poverty now, think what it will be like when we lead the world to NetZero.
So postpone NetZero to 2070 like all the other countries are/will. Do it now and we have a chance to recover.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

I don’t think net zero is necessarily regressive. A program of reindustrialisation that created skilled ‘green’ jobs, e.g. building batteries, operating and servicing turbines, building solar panels etc sounds to me like a great way for us to invest our way out of our current stagnation, all while making us less reliant on other countries for power

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

The treasury estimate is £3 trillion. So you can at least double that. Say £250billion per year for 27 yeard. Good luck.

Last edited 1 year ago by Chris Wheatley
Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

But for what exactly? Where will the money be going? You don’t think the government should also be investing in industry and good jobs (which I’m hoping at least some of this money will be for..)

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

But for what exactly? Where will the money be going? You don’t think the government should also be investing in industry and good jobs (which I’m hoping at least some of this money will be for..)

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

If it were profitable to voluntarily do “Net Zero”, private businesses would be doing it already. If it were more profitable for companies to promete “diversity” and “inclusion” “because it is better for their business” they would haver been doing it anyway.
Not all spending is actually “investment” or will generate any real return. I give you Gordon Brown …

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

I didn’t say it woud be (immediately) profitable for companies but profitable for our population who could find skilled, dignified and proper-paying work in industries that provide a public good. Like all big national achievements that requires the collaboration of different sectors and some government subsidy and co-ordination (as was the case with many successful mission-based ventures in the US, like Tesla and the moon landing).
Your point about companies spending money on inclusion and diversity I don’t totally understand? But sure, we should indeed be incentivising them to do things that really help ordinary people rather than spending money on pink and green washing themselves while paying low wages on loose contracts.
Unconvinced by Gordon Brown argument. Do you mean the Gordon Brown who was part of a Labour government that more than halved GP to surgery waiting times?

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

Gordon Brown. The man who confused “spending” with “investment” – every penny (of ours) he spent was always an “investment”. And went on a massive and hugely wasteful spending binge when he got the opportunity. The man who added even more complexity to an already bloated tax system – someone once labelled him “Complexity Brown”. The man who thought that central government planning and edict could solve every problem – someone else called him “Gosplan Gordon”. The man who confiscated Railtrack shareholders – because grannies savings don’t count and shareholders and dividends are bad. The man who killed pension saving and poured fuel on buy to let. Just “Greedy Gordon” for me.
Off topic: isn’t it curious how we hear about Dominic Raab’s supposed “bullying”, yet we never hear anything about Gordon Brown’s ? Much like Bill Clinton gets a free pass for his behaviour.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

Ok didn’t know name calling was now a substitute for substantive arguments but I suppose you have taught me something about the public imagination.
The rest – bewailing the plight of the elderly (and disproportionately wealthy and fiscally-catered to) sections of society – won’t win you the suppory of my generation. More meaningful to them are what he did in terms of public services, minimum wages and tax credits. I suppose what you see as less wasteful and greedy is a government that spends £14bn on dysfunctional PPE from its donors and associates and £37bn on a failed test and trace system?
The bullying accusations of Brown and Raab both got wide coverage. The smoothing over of the Clinton affair I’ll concede on the basis that the Republicans do not enjoy the monopoly on media sympathy that the Tories have here.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

Ok didn’t know name calling was now a substitute for substantive arguments but I suppose you have taught me something about the public imagination.
The rest – bewailing the plight of the elderly (and disproportionately wealthy and fiscally-catered to) sections of society – won’t win you the suppory of my generation. More meaningful to them are what he did in terms of public services, minimum wages and tax credits. I suppose what you see as less wasteful and greedy is a government that spends £14bn on dysfunctional PPE from its donors and associates and £37bn on a failed test and trace system?
The bullying accusations of Brown and Raab both got wide coverage. The smoothing over of the Clinton affair I’ll concede on the basis that the Republicans do not enjoy the monopoly on media sympathy that the Tories have here.

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

Gordon Brown. The man who confused “spending” with “investment” – every penny (of ours) he spent was always an “investment”. And went on a massive and hugely wasteful spending binge when he got the opportunity. The man who added even more complexity to an already bloated tax system – someone once labelled him “Complexity Brown”. The man who thought that central government planning and edict could solve every problem – someone else called him “Gosplan Gordon”. The man who confiscated Railtrack shareholders – because grannies savings don’t count and shareholders and dividends are bad. The man who killed pension saving and poured fuel on buy to let. Just “Greedy Gordon” for me.
Off topic: isn’t it curious how we hear about Dominic Raab’s supposed “bullying”, yet we never hear anything about Gordon Brown’s ? Much like Bill Clinton gets a free pass for his behaviour.

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

I didn’t say it woud be (immediately) profitable for companies but profitable for our population who could find skilled, dignified and proper-paying work in industries that provide a public good. Like all big national achievements that requires the collaboration of different sectors and some government subsidy and co-ordination (as was the case with many successful mission-based ventures in the US, like Tesla and the moon landing).
Your point about companies spending money on inclusion and diversity I don’t totally understand? But sure, we should indeed be incentivising them to do things that really help ordinary people rather than spending money on pink and green washing themselves while paying low wages on loose contracts.
Unconvinced by Gordon Brown argument. Do you mean the Gordon Brown who was part of a Labour government that more than halved GP to surgery waiting times?

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

The treasury estimate is £3 trillion. So you can at least double that. Say £250billion per year for 27 yeard. Good luck.

Last edited 1 year ago by Chris Wheatley
Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Desmond Wolf

If it were profitable to voluntarily do “Net Zero”, private businesses would be doing it already. If it were more profitable for companies to promete “diversity” and “inclusion” “because it is better for their business” they would haver been doing it anyway.
Not all spending is actually “investment” or will generate any real return. I give you Gordon Brown …

Desmond Wolf
Desmond Wolf
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

I don’t think net zero is necessarily regressive. A program of reindustrialisation that created skilled ‘green’ jobs, e.g. building batteries, operating and servicing turbines, building solar panels etc sounds to me like a great way for us to invest our way out of our current stagnation, all while making us less reliant on other countries for power

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago

If we have poverty now, think what it will be like when we lead the world to NetZero.
So postpone NetZero to 2070 like all the other countries are/will. Do it now and we have a chance to recover.