It is a phrase that crops up 21 times in the Labour manifesto, 12 times in the Conservative manifesto, and has been used in the House of Commons more than 3,500 times in the last decade. So, surely everyone knows what “working people” are – don’t we?
Perhaps not. In the buildup to next week’s budget there has been ever-increasing scrutiny and a parallel lack of clarity about what Labour’s manifesto commitment to not raise taxes on “working people” actually means in practice.
While ministers may want to insist that nothing can be given away in advance of a budget, they have faced inevitable questions about what they would view as a working person, often with mixed results.
Speaking to broadcasters in Samoa, Keir Starmer said he would not use the term for people who had income from assets such as shares or property. “They wouldn’t come within my definition,” he said. Downing Street hastily clarified that the prime minister did not mean people who owned small amounts of, for example, stocks or shares.
There was, inevitably, a long round of questions at the subsequent No 10 media briefing about precisely who did fit the definition. Starmer’s spokesperson set this out as “those who have to rely on their pay packets and do not always have the means to write a cheque, and it is those who are hardest hit by economic instability”.
What the PM had been referring to, she added, was “the broadest sense of who was in his mind’s eye when it comes to the importance of economic stability” – in other words, to an extent a working person is whoever Starmer sees them as being.
Amid this slightly salad-like cascade of words sit two interlocking definitions, the first economic and relatively precise, the other political and notably more woolly.
As more or less defined by the No 10 spokesperson, a working person is, for the most part, someone whose income is reliant on a regular wage, as distinct from someone who can rely on money from unearned wealth, for example rental income or share dividends.
The two can, of course, cross over, hence the focus on where the bulk of someone’s income derives. The National Residential Landlords Association rushed out a statement on Friday noting that 30% of landlords have full-time jobs and another 10% work part-time.
Many people will still be uncertain where they sit. Speaking to the BBC on Friday morning, David Blunkett, the Labour peer and Blair-era cabinet minister, said he had been stopped by several recently retired people who asked where they fitted under the “working people” categorisation. “I don’t have a particular answer for them, actually,” Blunkett confessed.
The political definition is even more vague, with “working people” routinely used as an all-encompassing synonym for the sort of diligent, taxpaying, family-raising voters at whom almost all political parties mentally pitch their ideas.
To use one example, the 12 references in the Conservative manifesto sets them out as citizens who will benefit variously from lower taxes, higher pay, continued consumer protections and more pragmatic net zero policies.
These worlds, however, have noisily intersected in the Labour document, with its very specific promise on taxes. In practical terms, this will almost certainly mean some higher taxes on unearned income, for example capital gains tax.
As set out repeatedly during the election, it will not involve increases to VAT, income tax or national insurance – or at least the NI paid by employees. That leaves a large patch of contested middle ground including things such as employers’ NI contributions, whether or not tax thresholds are raised, and fuel duty.
So by Wednesday afternoon, will you know whether the government sees you as a working person? Possibly not. Will the arguments continue? Definitely.
