Yesterday, Kwasi Kwarteng announced yet another Tory U-turn. This time, we discovered, that he would not be scrapping the 45% tax rate for the rich.
The Chancellor just last week revealed he’d be cutting the tax paid by people earning more than £150,000 a year during his “mini-budget”.
That was met by anger from all sides, including his own MPs that the rich should be the last people benefitting whilst many in the country are struggling to pay their bills and feed themselves.
The striking thing about Monday's announcement was the wording used - “we get it, we listened” as Kwarteng tweeted along with his statement.
While it was probably meant to reassure us common folk that the Government weren’t leaving us all to die while they let their rich mates get richer, the message actually did the opposite.
It came across as patronising and sneering, reading more like “yeah yeah we get it”.
Instead of sounding like a Government who is doing best by its people, it read like an exasperated teenager begrudgingly bringing down the five plates and three cups they’d been hoarding in their room because their mum threatens a general election.
The reason the announcement was so poorly received is that the Tories will never have to “get it”.
Rich, well-earning, and especially non-disabled people will never have to choose between heating or food.
Kwarteng and his donors will never have to tighten their already minuscule budget or drain their savings because despite having a degenerative illness, they've been declared fit for work.
They will never “get” what it’s like knowing that you’re making your health even worse by starving because the Government that claims to "listen" is wilfully letting you and millions of others die more and more each year and it’s only going to get worse.
If you want an idea of just how unpopular the cut was and how much the Tories are fighting to distance themselves from it.
As I was writing this, Esther McVey took to the stage at the Conservative party conference and urged the Prime Minister to raise benefits.
This is the same Esther McVey who made it harder to qualify for disability benefits and said benefits sanctions “teach jobseekers to look for work seriously”.
I’m sorry but there’s only so much my brain is willing to accept and that McVey is now on the side of benefits claimants is too much.
What the Truss and Kwarteng actually “get” is that their approval has taken an absolute nosedive and people are out for blood demanding an election. The Tories haven’t u-turned on this because they care.
I refuse to believe that the Tories made this decision because they care about the economy, or whether poor working class people will survive the winter.
As far as I see it, a lot of their problems would be solved if poor and disabled people just didn’t exist, but they’re fearfully realising that the rest of us won’t be silent while they decimate our communities, again.
They’re scared that working-class people have finally had enough. And they should be.
