As the budget approaches, outrage from the Tories and their media outriders at any mention of proposed tax rises is reaching boiling point. Never a word of what they would do about collapsing public services. Misleading claims about what the well-off pay already (no, the top 1% doesn’t pay a third of all tax) and harangues about tax at its highest since the war never admit that Britain raises less than most of our more successful neighbours. The chancellor, undeterred, needs to raise all the billions she can, harvesting most from those “broadest shoulders” now in full blustering defence of their capital gains, private school fees, private equity loopholes, agricultural tax hideaways and inheritance tax escapes. People need no reminding of the crippled state of Britain’s public realm, how it declined while the best-off enjoyed rapid increases in wealth in the past decade.
To keep a grip on that reality, I visited Seashells children’s centre in Sheerness, Kent, destined to be closed soon. About 49% of children in Sheerness are living below the poverty line, but the purpose-built Sure Start centre still stands as a model of Labour’s best social programme: Seashells was visited by Gordon Brown as prime minister. It is a rare survivor: most closed in Kent long ago, with those remaining rebranded as family hubs by the last government. Kent, like so many councils in deep debt, is burning through its reserves: this is just one example of the last government’s continuing legacy, as council cuts will go on. Jim Duncan, director of Seashells, working here since its 2002 opening, is heartbroken at all that will be lost to this community. The nursery for 200 will stay open, financed by state-funded fees, but everything that made Sure Start succeed will be stripped out.
