I am so bored of politicians talking about 'working families', who it seems are their sole priority.
I wonder if they ever worry about single people?
Or retired people?
Or students?
Or families where work is not possible because of disability, ill health, or the simple absence of available work?
And what about those separated from their families? Do they matter?
And why isn't the offence that this focus on families causes not considered, not least to those unable to have one?
'Working families' is a trope. It is intended to appeal to quite a small segment within society. I find it offensive. It really should be banned from the political lexicon.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
You missed an important word out, Richard.
They are not just any ordinary working families. They are *hard working* families.
That narrows the field even more.
True
Mea culpa
Thank you and well said, Richard, and well spotted, MD.
The Australian variation is battlers. Leo Varadkar talked about the people who get up early in the morning.
@ Richard: When you next write about Brexit, I have some tidbits from Paris, Brussels, the City and Whitehall.
Mail me
Which implies there are families which are not hard working and don’t deserve the same level of benefits.
Osborne seemed to believe that some needed the ‘incentive’ of frozen or lower benefits to get them into work at whatever level of wages their employers chose to pay them.
The old Victorian notion of the deserving and undeserving poor.
And Starmer subscribes to it.
He is the big user if this trope right now.
Thank you, Ian and Richard.
Reeves, too, and some other knuckle draggers from the Blair and Brown wonder years like Cooper.
As per my recent comments, they really are like that in real life*, despise those outside their circle(s) and think the work house is too good for us. At the same time, these professional managerial elite thinks it needs more leisure to think and rest from hard work. Cameron and Osborne, who I met a bit before the 2010 election are like that. Tory activist colleagues who know the pair better say so, too. *From university, alongside them, and work, with and for them. The genuine toffs, if a bit paternalist, are rarely like that, perhaps a sign of security.
“The old Victorian notion of the deserving and undeserving poor”.
The concept was (first?) articulated and developed as policy the Church (Church of Scotland) could practically promote by Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).
I think the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor goes back to at least the Poor Relief Act 1601
England full of “lazy” politicians “hard working” for themselves not others!
Political tropes to abolish.
For example the gullible media ‘track’ Sunak’s promise to halve inflation. Sky News today presents the inflation graph, and writes this: “You can see the progress for yourself below”; and then present the graph. No, you can’t “see” the progress for yourself; because that assumes what Sky cannot prove. The graph of course does not track a relationship between the fall in inflation and the actions Sunak has taken; indeed it is not even clear what action he has taken that could be asserted to have any direct influence on inflation; or even identifies the time lags of the actions that can be causally related to the inflation arc.
The best that could be speculated would be a correlation, and even that is challenging to prove. The causal link is beyond reach. It simply follows what it terms the “progress” of data which is simply the arc of a trend that displays nothing of the causes of the trend. It is an casually speculative assumption, without substance being peddled by Sky.
True
What is particularly offensive is that (hard) working families are not the tory priority anyway.
No, it’s pensioner-retirees, who have paid off their mortgage. That is the core Conservative voter.
Well that’s me. I must be such a disappointment to them!
And the latest Social Attitudes survey shows that even this demographic is no longer as right wing as it used to be.
It’s almost as if the UK population have looked at what’s been going on since 1983, when that series of surveys started, and steadily become more & more disillusioned with the central ideas of neoliberalism.
And that process continues, whatever the Daily Mail, the Sun and all the rest of that pseudo news business does. The rage farming is steadily becoming less & less effective.
Now, how do we, the long-trumpeted silent majority, get our share of the democratic cake? Do we have to follow Chris Packham down the road of acting illegally, to get rid of a government that is increasingly acting outside the law & outside the constitution?
It is as bad as ‘pensioners who have worked hard all their lives’. Some have, some haven’t, but it is a description that was added to every use of the word pensioner at one time. Now, when they want to cut the triple lock, it seems to have gone out of fashion.
Why don’t politicians talk about “rich idle parasites”…oh hang on, that’s who funds the politicos. Silly me.
‘Hard worked’ families is how it feels to the many at the sharp end with limited agency in their lives.
It is a wholly Dickensian idea, that only those who “work hard” are entitled to a decent life. Except of course those with enormous wealth who can live a life of excess without raising a finger – the real Tories.
Can we take Dickens out of the frame here, please. Scrooge and Gradgrind were his creations, yes, but he wasn’t praising them. I am pretty sure he would take our side on this one (though his solutions were limited and feeble, I admit). The society crafted by neoliberalism is “Dickensian”, however. He would hate it as much as his own. (It’s the Protestant Work Ethic which darkly throbs behind those objectionable terms.)
Good comment
Well yes, I meant Dickensian in the context of the society and politics of his time, not as something he advocated. He of course railed against it.
Thank you and well said, IMH.
Son of the manse Gordon Brown is a PWE enthusiast. Bit ascetic in real life and far too keen on anything that comes out of puritan Cambridge (Mass, not Cambs). As a Catholic and partly of French descent, I don’t subscribe.
But not in Thomas Chalmers mould, I surmise (speculatively).
Whenever I hear about “hard working families” I can’t get the picture of young children sweeping chimneys or working in factories – aren’t they allowed to just play?
🙂
No more than they are allowed to read literature for enjoyment. It all has to have an end in sight, a test or examination to see how much they have remembered from what the teacher has told them.
I asked ChatGPT to write a letter to Keir Starmer expressing concern about his use of this trope, copying this blogpost into the request, and this is what I got:
Subject: Concerns Regarding the Overuse of the Trope ‘Hard-Working Families’
Dear Mr. Starmer,
I hope this letter finds you well. I write to express my growing frustration with the persistent use of the trope ‘hard-working families’ in political discourse, which appears to be the primary focus of many politicians. While I appreciate the importance of supporting working families, it is disheartening to witness this emphasis overshadowing the concerns of other significant segments of society.
It begs the question: do politicians ever consider the challenges faced by single individuals, retired citizens, or students? What about those who are unable to work due to disability, ill health, or a lack of available job opportunities? Are they not equally deserving of attention and support?
Furthermore, I wonder about the plight of individuals separated from their families, whether due to work commitments, migration, or other reasons. Do their struggles and aspirations not matter in the grand scheme of political priorities?
The issue I find most troubling is the offense caused by this narrow focus on ‘working families.’ It seems to exclude and marginalize those who do not fit this category, including those who, for various reasons, cannot have families of their own. The relentless use of this trope perpetuates the idea that only one specific demographic deserves political consideration.
I strongly believe that ‘working families’ has become an overused and exclusionary trope. It appears designed to appeal to a relatively small segment of society while overlooking the diverse needs and challenges faced by others. I find it offensive, and I believe it should be eliminated from the political lexicon to promote a more inclusive and empathetic approach to governance.
I hope you will consider these concerns seriously and advocate for a more balanced and inclusive political discourse that addresses the needs of all members of society, regardless of their family status or circumstances.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
I trust you will actually send this!
I was hoping someone else might…
For ‘working families’ read ‘available for exploitation’. They’re only interested in those they can convince to hurl themselves down the mines and up the chimneys.
Rachel Reeves actually told benefit claimants that the labour party was not for them.
I thought that was recently, but it was as far back as March 2015, even pre-Corbyn.
My better half was talking about this the other day.
I agree with most of the comments here but the way we see it is that everyone comes from or is part of a family whether they want to be or not. It’s how human beings work. There is also a value judgement in there too, especially if you are not working, ill or disabled.
Our view was that ‘hard working families’ is just political short hand for ‘the deserving poor’.
I once said to my line manager at a staff meeting when he said we need to work harder as a team that working harder does not neccessarily mean you are more productive, in fact it could slow you down from either physical or mental exhaustion. I suggested that instead we should look at ways of working more effectively and say get the appropriate training for this as we had a budget for it. Luckily he agreed and I was not sent off with a P45!