Jeremy Hunt will appeal to voters next week, if the leaks are true, on behalf of the Tory party’s worst instincts. The chancellor’s “autumn statement for growth” is said to include inheritance tax cuts that benefit the rich, reduced welfare payments which the poor rely on, and the withdrawal of free medical care from “coasters” who want to “take taxpayers for a ride”. To push the idea that the state should, in a cost of living crisis, reward the rich and punish the poor reveals an appalling disregard for social justice.
The five giants of poverty first identified in the second world war – want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness – are returning in new forms. MPs warn that the babies of poor families are dying for want of a cot as the benefit rules don’t provide for safe sleeping provision for the homeless. Diseases caused by malnutrition and associated with destitution, such as scurvy and rickets, now appear in doctors’ surgeries. With food prices 30% higher than two years ago, the ranks of the hungry are growing. The former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown warned only this week that “poverty, as distinct from neglect, parental addictions or domestic violence, is now a principal cause of children being forced into care”.
The ruling party has not succeeded even on its own terms. The promise of a “high wage, high skill” economy has yielded average real wages lower than before the 2008 financial crisis, while 4 million people remain on zero-hours contracts or in insecure work. The UK is one of the most geographically unequal of all major economies, despite claims of levelling up. The country needs to change course by properly funding welfare, the NHS and social housing. Money should not be a problem. Ministers could just redirect to frontline services a portion of the annual £34bn “stealth subsidy” that the Bank of England is set to dole out to big banks between 2024 and 2028.
The Tory party is wrong to see individual agency and pathology as behind the social crisis. But Britain’s governing class is so full of people making mistakes that it seems necessary to look for an explanation beyond their individual flaws. The UK is at a critical juncture and political parties need to relinquish a failing paradigm. The deepening cracks in the nation’s social structure are a clear sign that voters cannot just be left to face the cold winds of the market on their own.
However jarring it might seem for Tory ministers, they would profit from taking a harder look at government policies during the global disruptions of this decade, as a recent pamphlet by the Fabian Society has. When external shocks hit the UK, such as the Covid pandemic in 2020, the state has to step in. The Fabians, with some justification, also see conflicting departmental aims as hindering effective policymaking, singling out fiscal and monetary policy as suffering from a lack of coordination.
Politicians would benefit from understanding how a more unified state response would meet the challenges of an ageing society, growing inequalities and a deepening climate emergency. The thinktank suggests that fairer, more sustainable growth could be better secured through public spending while regulation and price controls are used to keep inflation in check. This is where policy should be heading in the future, not backwards to a failed economic and social strategy.
