Far from ditching generous pensions, Britain needs a ‘triple lock’ for working-age benefits too

Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt. ‘Tory grandees such as William Hague have called for the triple lock to be scrapped. And Rishi Sunak is said to be considering it.’ Photograph: Guardian Design / PA

The Labour party is ahead in the polls. The Conservatives are in disarray. And Tony Blair is back on the scene. British politics is starting to feel a bit Britpop. Sadly, if there were a theme tune to capture the mood of the country today, REM’s Everybody Hurts would be more appropriate than D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better.

One statistic, more than any other, tells this story: a staggering 72% of British people believe their kids are going to be financially worse off than them. This is profoundly concerning because it goes against an iron law of liberal democratic politics: each generation is supposed to do better than the one before it. Now, however, younger generations have seen lower wage growth and are less likely to own a home than their parents at the same point in their own lives.