I wrote an article for The Independent yesterday. The title they asked me to wrote about was 'It's now impossible for the average worker to live decently in Britain'.
The article began with an exploration of data on this issue, which I felt to be important. Then, though, I moved to the politics:
If the average household once voted Tory, it was because they had aspirations for their children. They supported children with talent in sport, music or anything else. They helped those with coaching in subjects they struggled in. And they sent them on school trips, believing these were a key part of “getting on”.
All that is now beyond such families. The struggle to survive has tipped the balance for average-income households. Once they saw themselves, or their children, as being on the way to better things. This was the dream Thatcher and her successors sold them.
It was this hope of a secure life that might get better that defined “decent living”. Those in the upper two income quintiles already had it. Those in the bottom two were told by the snubs sent in the direction of all those who were either on or faced the risk of being on benefits that this was not a hope they could or should share. But the average household was supposed to have a home, a pension, a Ford, a holiday in the sun and access to advancement for their children within their grasp. This was what defined living decently.
That aspiration is now but a faded memory. Instead, the desperate hope is that all the essential household bills might be paid and Christmas might be afforded, somehow. Lurking in the background is the realisation that none of this might be possible and that inability to pay, insolvency and the insecurity that results from them are all a real possibility.
The hope of a decent living has departed for the average household. Fear is all that remains for those who once had hope. Forty years after politics abandoned the post-war consensus, our economy now fails the majority in this country. The era of living decently on average pay is over.
And that, I suggest, changes the whole political landscape.
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Given that the Police/Security Services/Armed Forces will be in the same boat as the rest of us, I thank that we might be in for an interesting 12 months.
Could we become Modern Europe’s first failed state?
Quite probably, yes
Britain – unchained as Patel and Raab wanted – has also become morally unchained as the populace is thrown to the free-market wolves and the rentier society begins to take further hold.
The question is, are people going to stand for it?
And what are the alternatives? My worry with Labour is that they are wrapped up in knots as the Tory party are in Neo-lib ideology and just want to tinker because even though one of their own (Gordon Brown) revealed what Government controlled central banks can do.
Since then, that potential has been turned into a poisonous well of debt and seems to be a no go area for the Left and other so-called progressives.
We don’t need more tinkering or management – we need action! We need change!
Fairly positive below the line reception to the article – with one tory troll – who picked data selectively preferring the higher ONS figure compared to the lower HMRC figure.
It begs the question – how long can the tory-vultures keep the lid on? Something has got to blow.
I never look BTL on such articles – preservation of sanity prevents it
Those days are long gone Richard.
Think about this century so far – an illegal war in Iraq with the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians all in the name of oil, a banking/financial crisis unlike anything seen for decades. Pandering to dictators around the world with our pal, the USA, continuing to subvert local democracy, threats to the glorious UK state, with the rise in independence movements not only in Scotland, but throughout the other devolved nations and some English regions, a pandemic and now a cost of living crisis.
What are the government responses to this ? – restrict personal freedoms, stagnate wages, pound us with UK state propaganda (royal family, Union Jack, 5 years of WW1 commemorations, flags everywhere and blame it all on immigrants)
It worked, who was the most successful politician between 2010 and 2020 ?
– Nigel Farage, he achieved exactly what he set out to do, no other politician comes close.
Those aspirations you talk of have been changed. Now it is about being a British patriot, hating immigrants, hating the woke, hating Europe and believing that without the City of London, tax havens and greedy entrepreneurs we would all be living in caves again.
Read this and weep, like I did.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/cost-of-living-crisis-free-school-meals-poverty-children-food-friends/
Kids who buy food for other kids will never vote tory. Kids showing grown ups how to behave.
Every Govt department has been failing for decades & nothing is done. Poor leadership is one of UKs major problems with very low investment compared to other developed countries.
With very little research/evidence based practice, poor strategies (poor or weak long term planning), a weak manufacturing base, higher rates of income & wealth inequality, political instability (Labour v Tory dichotomy), the more we just carry on as usual & believe those in charge know what they are doing (they rarely do), the more likely problems will get much worse.
There is overwhelming evidence that this is the case based on many reports spanning 25 years or more.
We need to redesign everything. We need to focus on values, ethics, & morality to ensure people act & behave appropriately. We need stricter laws for execs. We need to make high level leaders more accountable as role models. We need more preventative measures to stop abuse.
We have the resources, but they are not where they need to be, mostly because the structures & systems are unfair, unjust & unwise.
“The era of living decently on average pay is over.”
I fear that you could very well be right. Even if official inflation returns to levels of a year ago, I do wonder whether that will be reflected in the price of things we need as against those that we don’t have to buy. It has always seemed to me that official inflation overstates the things we don’t need as against the price of things we do need just to live, some of which we are legally required to pay, i.e. mortgage, rent, gas, electricity, water, where if you don’t pay you could end up in court. This is crucial for those on low pay, minimum wage or benefits. They pay more for things they need as a proportion of their income. Official inflation means nothing to them as they struggle to pay their bills. Things could get very nasty very quick.
Even worse, it’s now getting closer to hurting those on average pay or who historically might have been seen as doing well. Not any more.
Meanwhile, the Tories fiddle as Rome burns. Fiddle being the operative word.
I can say, as someone with a bottom level income, that i only spend on bare essentials – food and household necessities. So most things in the ‘basket of goods’ used to calculate inflation mean nothing at all to me. Within the past few months, ‘my’ rate of inflation – excluding utilities – is at least 17% total, with numerous items being cranked up in price every few weeks!
I haven’t been hit by the gas/elec price rises yet as i topped up my old style prepay meters to the max in March. To make this last as long as it possibly can, i have now taken to switching off *everything* not in use at the socket. I’ve used the dial on the (combi) boiler to switch off both the heating and the hot water (what’s the point of wasting precious gas while handwashing – it’s done before the hot comes through!) and the water only goes on when i want a shower. Within days i could see a dramatic drop in the gas consumption.
Now i’m just left dreading the day it all runs out!
And we simply cannot trust the shower of in gov to do anything that meaningfully alleviates this situation.
Thanks for sharing
Remember, CPI inflation rate the government uses does not include some housing costs – council tax, house price rises, maybe mortgage payments – can’t quite remember but some are definitely excluded.
Some of those are included in the RPI inflation rate, or I think the CPIH rate.
Anyway, the way I always think of it is when the government and BBC tell me the rate of inflation is 10% using the CPI (Consumer Prices Index) , I always go and check what the RPI (Retail Prices Index) is – that;’s usually 1-2% higher, maybe 12% and then I know the actual rate is probably around 11%.
I’m probably completely wrong to do so but anyway, the important thing is this: when the government have to adjust payments out – pensions, benefits etc, they tend to favour the lower CPI rate when making increases.
Conversely, when gathering payments, like duties on alcohol, tobacco etc they tend to favour the higher RPI rate to gate a little extra revenue.
I continue to believe RPI is what matters
I know of only one successful and coherent nation state in the modern era, and that is Singapore. I think it was successful not, or not primarily, because it was autocratic, but because it genuinely achieved the reality of modest but real advancement for ordinary people. It is this honest achievement, and not primarily the fact of its wealth, that shows that a nation can pull together in peacetime as nations so often do in wartime. Singapore is admired by the Tories, but it is the rest of us to whom it gives hope.
The evidence is all out there and cannot be convincingly read in any other way. The achievement was hard won. Perhaps that gave it more of a wartime feeling. But writings by and about Lee Kuan Yew are plentiful and clear. Without suffering the usual snags of corruption and Internecine conflict, a strong, coherent and persistent party puts the public sector in the driving seat and creates a civil service of which much is Demanded and which is justly rewarded. The beneficiaries of the clarity of mind and persistence of effort are the rank and file of all ethnicities.
What do we say? Certainly, political plans cannot be duplicated from country to country. Is is it that English people are too set in their ways to create their own version of this? Perhaps they won’t be after the UKIP Tories have crashed the economy
Singapore is a fascist, one party state
I think you are on the wrong blog