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| The UN has condemned Tory welfare policies. Labour must end this shame | The UN has condemned Tory welfare policies. Labour must end this shame |
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| How did Britain in 2019 – one of the wealthiest societies that has ever existed – end up being damned by a United Nations report for condemning the poor to lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”? These are the words of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes; another British literary great conjured up by Prof Philip Alston – the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and a bete noir of our crumbling government – is Charles Dickens and his vivid description of the 19th-century workhouse now being brought back in “a digital and sanitised version”. | How did Britain in 2019 – one of the wealthiest societies that has ever existed – end up being damned by a United Nations report for condemning the poor to lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”? These are the words of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes; another British literary great conjured up by Prof Philip Alston – the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and a bete noir of our crumbling government – is Charles Dickens and his vivid description of the 19th-century workhouse now being brought back in “a digital and sanitised version”. |
| The government, he contended, was guilty of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”, and that “much of the glue that has held British society together since the second world war has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”. | The government, he contended, was guilty of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”, and that “much of the glue that has held British society together since the second world war has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”. |
| An academic study last year found that cuts to the welfare state played a key role in the Brexit result | An academic study last year found that cuts to the welfare state played a key role in the Brexit result |
| That ethos, and its collision with reality, lies at the root of our present turmoil. This week, the BBC broadcast the first instalment of Thatcher: A Very British Revolution. It begins with a speech from 1985, just weeks after the defeat of the miners’ strike, and near the zenith of her powers. “With capitalism and free enterprise, there are no boundaries of class or creed or colour,” she declared. “Everyone can climb the ladder as high as their talents will take them.” | That ethos, and its collision with reality, lies at the root of our present turmoil. This week, the BBC broadcast the first instalment of Thatcher: A Very British Revolution. It begins with a speech from 1985, just weeks after the defeat of the miners’ strike, and near the zenith of her powers. “With capitalism and free enterprise, there are no boundaries of class or creed or colour,” she declared. “Everyone can climb the ladder as high as their talents will take them.” |
| Here was Thatcherism in its populist iteration: the individual would be freed from the stifling constraints of the state and collectivism, and through grit, determination and ability, one could rise to the very top. But this philosophy would prove all too convenient when it came to rationalising exploding levels of inequality. Those whose bank balances boomed in the 1980s just happened to the best, the most talented, hard-working go-getters; those at the bottom of the pecking order were lazy, lacking in aspiration and ambition – stupid, even. | Here was Thatcherism in its populist iteration: the individual would be freed from the stifling constraints of the state and collectivism, and through grit, determination and ability, one could rise to the very top. But this philosophy would prove all too convenient when it came to rationalising exploding levels of inequality. Those whose bank balances boomed in the 1980s just happened to the best, the most talented, hard-working go-getters; those at the bottom of the pecking order were lazy, lacking in aspiration and ambition – stupid, even. |
| “In Western countries we are left with the problems which aren’t poverty,” Thatcher declared on the brink of power; if there was “poverty”, she argued, it was because “people didn’t know how to budget, didn’t know how to spend their earnings”. At the root here was a “really hard fundamental character-personality defect.” | “In Western countries we are left with the problems which aren’t poverty,” Thatcher declared on the brink of power; if there was “poverty”, she argued, it was because “people didn’t know how to budget, didn’t know how to spend their earnings”. At the root here was a “really hard fundamental character-personality defect.” |
| Thatcherism intended to transform our attitudes – she herself once boasted that “economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”: rather than considering poverty or unemployment as social problems, as systemic injustices embedded in the structure of society that needed collective solutions, they were personal failings. It was up to the individual to pull themselves together and escape hardship through their effort; the welfare state merely infantilised them, and promoted fecklessness. | Thatcherism intended to transform our attitudes – she herself once boasted that “economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”: rather than considering poverty or unemployment as social problems, as systemic injustices embedded in the structure of society that needed collective solutions, they were personal failings. It was up to the individual to pull themselves together and escape hardship through their effort; the welfare state merely infantilised them, and promoted fecklessness. |
| When New Labour introduced Sure Start and tax credits, lives were undoubtedly transformed; but while Thatcherism was humanised, its underlying logic remained. It is this ideology that leads disabled and sick people to be judged fit for work. One mental health nurse working in crisis services in Sheffield tells me of “service users with years of medical notes which clearly state they’re unwell who have been found fit for work”. They are found in cold homes, he tells me, with no gas or electricity because their benefits have been stopped. | When New Labour introduced Sure Start and tax credits, lives were undoubtedly transformed; but while Thatcherism was humanised, its underlying logic remained. It is this ideology that leads disabled and sick people to be judged fit for work. One mental health nurse working in crisis services in Sheffield tells me of “service users with years of medical notes which clearly state they’re unwell who have been found fit for work”. They are found in cold homes, he tells me, with no gas or electricity because their benefits have been stopped. |
| David, a 43-year-old Mancunian, who has a history of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, tells me he suffered a heart attack in 2014, after being put on employment and support allowance (ESA). He says he was hospitalised with chest pains, and despite informing his Job Centre Plus that he would miss his monthly work coach appointment as a result, he had his benefits sanctioned – arbitrarily stopped – for two months from November. “Suffice to say it was the bleakest Christmas I’d ever had,” he tells me. | David, a 43-year-old Mancunian, who has a history of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, tells me he suffered a heart attack in 2014, after being put on employment and support allowance (ESA). He says he was hospitalised with chest pains, and despite informing his Job Centre Plus that he would miss his monthly work coach appointment as a result, he had his benefits sanctioned – arbitrarily stopped – for two months from November. “Suffice to say it was the bleakest Christmas I’d ever had,” he tells me. |
| Hackney Community Law Centre deals with those at the sharp end of this merciless ideology in east London. Its solicitors, Nathaniel Mathews and Marcin Brajta, recount countless examples: of a mother who arrived from Sweden as a little girl with permanent right of residence, condemned to a studio flat with four children and left with £26,000 worth of arrears because she couldn’t get data belonging to her mentally ill father; of a man who lost his job and was then illegally evicted, because the derisory amount of local housing allowance for under-35s cannot cover the cost of private rents; of a woman knocked off her bike, breaking both legs, but wasn’t eligible for benefits and was left with no income and having to go to food banks. | Hackney Community Law Centre deals with those at the sharp end of this merciless ideology in east London. Its solicitors, Nathaniel Mathews and Marcin Brajta, recount countless examples: of a mother who arrived from Sweden as a little girl with permanent right of residence, condemned to a studio flat with four children and left with £26,000 worth of arrears because she couldn’t get data belonging to her mentally ill father; of a man who lost his job and was then illegally evicted, because the derisory amount of local housing allowance for under-35s cannot cover the cost of private rents; of a woman knocked off her bike, breaking both legs, but wasn’t eligible for benefits and was left with no income and having to go to food banks. |
| Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that? | Richard Reeves | Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that? | Richard Reeves |
| It’s not just the sick: in a country in which most people in poverty are in work, the Tories’ war on the welfare state has hammered those they patronise for “doing the right thing”. One working family with four children in Milton Keynes told me how they are now struggling after being shifted from tax credits on to universal credit; the mother holds down two jobs, working most days from 5.30am to 11pm. | It’s not just the sick: in a country in which most people in poverty are in work, the Tories’ war on the welfare state has hammered those they patronise for “doing the right thing”. One working family with four children in Milton Keynes told me how they are now struggling after being shifted from tax credits on to universal credit; the mother holds down two jobs, working most days from 5.30am to 11pm. |
| Here is an ideology that has led to misery, social ruin and political turmoil: an academic study last year found that cuts to the welfare state played a key role in the Brexit result. But Labour is not firing at this open goal. Its 2017 manifesto committed only to partially reversing the Tory cuts; and while its focus on redirecting anger at Britain’s elites, rather than engaging in a Dutch auction over benefits-bashing, has undoubtedly reframed a debate once dominated by “scrounger” rhetoric, it has failed to consistently make a passionate case for an alternative. | |
| A commitment to reversing all cuts must be forthcoming. Labour could also champion the work of Stewart Lansley, who has devised a detailed study of how universal basic income – giving everyone a safety net, regardless of circumstances – can be made to practically work. Another ambitious idea, promoted by the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, is for universal basic services, providing guaranteed free housing, food and transport. What is lacking is not wealth and resources, but ambition: of a social order incapable of satisfying the needs of millions of people in this rich nation. We are now condemned by the UN; and only a resolute commitment from Labour to break with the ideology that led us here can wash away the shame. | A commitment to reversing all cuts must be forthcoming. Labour could also champion the work of Stewart Lansley, who has devised a detailed study of how universal basic income – giving everyone a safety net, regardless of circumstances – can be made to practically work. Another ambitious idea, promoted by the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, is for universal basic services, providing guaranteed free housing, food and transport. What is lacking is not wealth and resources, but ambition: of a social order incapable of satisfying the needs of millions of people in this rich nation. We are now condemned by the UN; and only a resolute commitment from Labour to break with the ideology that led us here can wash away the shame. |
| • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist | • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist |
| Poverty | Poverty |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Conservatives | Conservatives |
| Universal credit | Universal credit |
| Benefits | Benefits |
| Welfare | Welfare |
| Margaret Thatcher | Margaret Thatcher |
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