As regular readers are aware, every now and again a comment arrives on this blog that I think should be an article in its own right. This happened yesterday, when regular commentator Ken Mathieson posted a comment in response to my questioning why Labour will not promise to eliminate child poverty, even though they very obviously have the capacity to do so. Ken said:
There's a very informative piece about this topic in a speech Danny Dorling gave in a book shop in Edinburgh. It's at Shattering nations, Scotland vs England and inequality: Danny Dorling at Edinburgh's Topping Books (youtube.com) and Danny starts to address the topic at 5:30 in. The source for this was Leah Gunn Barrett's blog of 20th May : dearscotland.substack.com
For those who are too short of time to listen to the entire youtube entry, she transcribed the relevant part about child poverty as follows: “… a European country in 2020 that, when faced with the cost of living crisis and a pandemic, convened a government emergency committee and introduced a payment of £10 per week for each child under the age of 6 in families receiving benefits. In 2022 this was then increased to £25 per week for each child under the age of 16. For a family with 3 children, this meant an extra £4k per year. He asked the audience to guess which country he was talking about. Someone immediately responded, “Scotland.”
When he poses this question to his average English audience, he said it takes ten guesses to land on Scotland. That's because England has no idea what Scotland has done to blunt Westminster welfare cuts or anything else for that matter. The media doesn't report it, although it has to be said Scotland's unionist media doesn't relish reporting things that Scotland does well.
Professor Dorling said the Scottish Child Payment is responsible for the biggest reduction in child poverty in a year anywhere in Europe since 1989. The Scottish administration accomplished this within the Westminster-imposed Barnett Formula budgetary straightjacket. It just goes to show that alleviating poverty is a political choice.
He gave a quick history of the UK's economic deterioration and rising inequality. Both began at the end of the 1970s. In the 1960s, only Sweden had a lower rate of inequality than the UK. In 1974 inequality in the UK reached its lowest level, competing with Finland and Norway, and the UK had the highest life expectancy and lowest infant mortality rates in the world.
From the 1980s, it's been downhill as neoliberalism, ushered in by Thatcher, took hold. By 1992 inequality in the UK was worse than Portugal but Tory voters were doing well. New Labour did little to reverse inequalities. By 2016, only Bulgaria was more unequal than the UK. The UK government's excuse was “At least we're not as bad as South Africa or Brazil.”
The 2008 financial crisis followed by Tory austerity and the pandemic have accelerated the UK's social and economic nosedive. It's telling that when the UK left the EU, the European Parliament lost its largest bloc of far-right MEPs made up of UKIP and the Tories.
The Resolution Foundation's Living Standards Outlook 2023 reported that 56% of children in the UK with 2 siblings were going hungry 2-3 times per month, figures not seen since the 1930s. Imperial College's School of Public Health found that the average height of children in the UK is falling – UK five-year-olds are shorter than their European counterparts. The height decline began in 1985 and experts suggest that poor nutrition is stunting their growth.
In addition, UK life expectancy is decreasing while depression and other mental illnesses are soaring. Failure is being normalised. In my local grocery store, there's a sign asking shoppers to donate to the local food bank. Food banks didn't exist before 2000 – now there are over 2,500.
This is why I routinely refer to the “failing UK.” A state is failing when it fails its people – their health, their welfare, their education, their futures.
And Keir Starmer's English Labour party, a party which Dorling says ‘lost its soul' in the late 1990s, is comfortably in bed with its corporate donors so won't change the downward trajectory of this failing state but continue it.
My take: if Scotland can do it with the entire funding of its economy effectively controlled by Westminster via the Barnett consequentials, Starmer has absolutely no excuse to naysay its adoption UK-wide.
I agree with Ken's conclusion.
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Very valuable summary of what changed in Britain pre- and post- 1979. For anyone who, like me, didn’t know much about Danny Dorling, here’s his Wiki entry. Impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dorling
A very fine article. Bravo Scotland – a living reproach to England.
Do we have the right perspective on this? Are we looking at “the problem” from the right angle/distance. Is English child poverty a symptom?
Which country looks similar(ish) to England in terms of inequality, poverty etc. The USA.
This is the US economist & historian Denny Ludwell in the 1930s:
“We were Britain’s colony once, she will be our colony before she’s done. Not in name, but in fact. We shan’t make Britain’s mistake: too wise to govern the world we shall merely own it. Nothing can stop us, nothing.. what chance has Britain got against American ”
Due to the shared language the Uk has proved an easy target for the USA, its corporations and its neo-liberalism. Neo-lib attitudes pervade what passes for UK politics, Streeting is a tool of US “health” interests. English child poverty could be resolved with a few click on a BoE keyboard. That it is not shows how UK politics is now US politics in terms of attitudes to the lived reality of many (most?) people. As in the USA, hungry kids don’t count and, mostly their parents don’t vote ergo – they don’t count..
Welcome to feral politics – in the USA’s newest state.
Well exactly! Starmer is a dud at least for those who care and willing to use their brains!
Sadly there are a lot of caring and intelligent people out there who have neither the time nor the mental bandwidth to read widely about politics, economics and blogs like this, I know I didn’t until I stopped teaching full time. Most people are very dependent on the MSM and tend to hope for the best. This is why the ownership of most of our media is so damaging and badly needs regulating.
Agreed
But 24,000 came here yesterday
This sounds very similar to a talk that Dorling gave at the LSE last October. At the link below are links to a podcast and video, if anyone is interested to see what he said. There is also a Q&A blogpost which makes many of the same points, plus, “when Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement, she said “New Labour”.” I wonder how she would have felt about Starmer’s party.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2023/10/202310161830/nation
The misrepresentation of what is happening in Scotland informs us of the nature of the British state, politics, media and even a sizeable part of the electorate. A significant number of, mainly older Scottish Unionists are more committed to the Union than to democracy, or scrupulousness. Contrast this with what gives popular traction in British politics: compulsory national service. Neither the Army nor Business wants to be pressed into being obliged to fix Britain’s social problems, because the Government has failed it’s duties, and a Party that wants to return to an authoritarian state using desperate measures to defend a doomed world Empire through two world wars. And people wonder why so many Scots have had enough of Britain and it’s self-destructive, neurotic obsessions.
Quite so John, but as you replied to me a couple of weeks ago when I quoted Cunninghame Graham’s belief that it would be the Scots who would prevent us becoming an Independent nation, and while there may now be a majority in favour, how exactly do we go about achieving our aim? I’m afraid I don’t know how we reach our goal.
The problem is Sterling. The Scots are more committed to Sterling, than to the Union. That is what requires to be addressed and fixed. The rest follows.
I tend to agree
John raised the topic of misrepresentation above and regular readers here will be aware of his frequent rages about BBC Scotland’s distorted coverage of Scottish news items. Just by chance an academic paper on the misrepresentation of news coverage by BBC Scotland and BBC Wales appeared today on another Scottish website:
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/05/29/imbalanced-reporting-of-scotland-to-undermine-the-snp/
Scroll down to read the paper which dates from 2023 but doesn’t identify who wrote/commissioned it.
That’s Prof John Robertson’s blog. I assume he wrote it. He was Prof in media politics at the University of the West of Scotland and wrote a piece on the bias of BBC Scotland for which, he claims, they tried to get him sacked.
https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/30/i-was-bullied-bbc-over-academic-report-indyref-bias-scottish-media-blackout-must
“frequent rages”. And I thought I was being measured ………
Richard,
Thanks for promoting the piece I submitted (in response to an earlier article) to a separate article. However the kudos should go to Leah Gunn Barrett – who wrote everything from para 3 line 2 down to the second-last para, in an article for her blog on wide-ranging matters relating to Scotland, its politics and its people – and Danny Dorling whose original speech she transcribed. For anyone interested in Leah’s work, her blog is at dearscotland@substack.com
Thanks Ken
Here’s a link to my blogpost: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/the-failing-uk
Thank you
And apologies for insufficient credit being given