Starmer and Reeves have turned their backs on Britain’s poorest

Poverty is not inevitable; it is man-made

October 8, 2024 7:00 am(Updated 7:07 am)

Earlier this year, a supermarket security guard accused a young woman of stealing diapers. She was carrying a child, a beautiful little girl with blue eyes and auburn curls. People stopped and stared. I ran up and told her she was with me, that she had put the diapers in her bag because she couldn’t carry a child and a wire basket.

At the checkout she seemed paralyzed with shame and fear. I said I would buy her diapers if she needed them if she called me. She said she didn’t have a phone. I never saw her again.

Some Brits say you shouldn’t have children if you can’t afford to raise them. (In the 1950s and 1960s, unwed mothers faced the same contempt and cruelty.) Things happen, life takes you by surprise. No one intends to be a burden on society. The idealists who designed the welfare state – accessible to everyone who needs it, including you and me – were not so judgmental.

Being human means caring, trying to understand people on the margins of society. Some are women and men doing work for desperately low wages. Others, like this mother, are doing what they can to obtain essentials. Yes, I know what professional shoplifters are. But some do this because they have to.

Poverty is not inevitable – it is man-made. The austerity program of David Cameron’s coalition government led to the sanctioning of deprivation. Meanwhile, those who have… now have more and more.

In an updated version of his book, The Inequality of Wealth: Why It Matters and How to Fix ItFormer Labor MP Liam Byrne is urging the Prime Minister to build a fairer Britain by closing inheritance loopholes, deducting national insurance contributions from investment income and reducing capital gains tax increase to the same level as income tax. It’s a no brainer. Inequality crushes spirits and ambitions and, according to Byrne, fuels the rise of populism.

Recently my accountant tried to suggest tricks I could use to avoid estate taxes on what I leave behind. I told him I wanted this tax paid. He thought I had gone quite crazy. Our culture is so zealously against taxes, that it is blasphemous to say that paying taxes helps build a cohesive and thriving society.

In 2017, Tom Heberlein, an American academic who divides his time between Wisconsin and Sweden, wrote: “US tax revenues are only 26 percent of GDP (the third lowest of all countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation). and Development), while in Sweden this is 43 percent. But tax dollars are not burned – they are used to provide public goods that are beyond the reach of any individual and that benefit everyone. These public goods give the middle class more choices, not fewer.”

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Be honest. Are you happy with the state we are in? More people are sleeping on the streets; Last year, 655,000 people used a Trussell Trust food bank for the first time and demand for emergency food has doubled in five years; Four million children go hungry. Some pretend to eat from empty lunch boxes. Their growth is stunted; Scabies, rickets and scurvy – Victorian diseases – have returned.

Yet Keir Starmer’s winning manifesto only mentioned the word ‘inequality’ once. And Chancellor Rachel Reeves is threatening even more cuts to social services. Continuity politics. Do they think we voted for that?

Labor should aim for a new balance between those whose lives were destroyed under the Tories and those who kept winning.

Many MPs understand that. A striking example is Rosie Duffield, who wrote this after resigning from the Labor whip: “Someone with well-above-average wealth who chooses to maintain the Conservative two-child limit in order to receive benefits that entrench children in poverty, while he inexplicably accepts expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses that cost more than most of those people can fathom – this absolutely does not deserve the title of Labor Prime Minister.”

But power perverts or disorients many others. Take Torsten Bell, recently elected to represent Swansea West; previously CEO of the Resolution Foundation, an independent think tank focused on economic inequality. His book, Britain? How we get our future backfound that households in Britain became poorer under the Conservatives and argued that as a result economic stagnation is becoming entrenched. That undermines hope. He called for the abolition of two-child allowances, because “it has not made families have fewer children, but has actually made them much poorer.”

Look what happened next to the socially conscientious Mr. Bell. He voted against the abolition of the two-child allowance. And last week at the Cheltenham Book Festival he defended Rachel Reeves’ rejection of the wealth tax, sneering: “On the tax side, it’s very fashionable on the left to say ‘let’s introduce a wealth tax’…(that) isn’t Where. very useful when it comes to helping govern the country.” He will go far.

Political volatility breeds public anger and cynicism. The Prime Minister and Chancellor can take Liam Byrne’s sage advice to heart, tax the rich and promote class equality. Or continue to treat ordinary voters arrogantly and lose their trust. It’s up to you, Mr. Keir.