12 November 2015
Sea Green Incorruptible
by Don Urquhart
Thomas Carlyle described Citoyen Robespierre as a sea green incorruptible and were he around today might similarly characterise Jeremy Corbyn. In recent PMQ’s, the leader of the opposition used up 9 of his 12 allotted questions making the same inquiry of David Cameron – “Are you persisting with your policy of draining the lifeblood of the working poor?” or some such. Cameron seemed uncomfortable at being addressed at the Dispatch Box by someone who wanted answers to real questions rather than acting out the traditional charade.
The IFS told us that Osborne’s Working Tax Credit (WTC) changes would take £1300 per year from 3 million families. I lost count of the apologists rattling on about how additional child care funding would offset the WTC reduction. What sort of policy is it that provides you with additional child care so that you can work longer hours? Why do we not pay parents to stay home and bring the children up properly? And what is this “child care” other than “babysitting” or “child minding”, an infant’s first experience of and grooming for preventive detention? Julia Hartley-Brewer had it that many claimants found it easier to take WTC than work extra hours. Lord Heseltine maintained that people will benefit from higher wages. They both lost the thread when asked the how and why questions. How easy it was to depict George Osborne as a Freddy Krueger type Halloween villain. Jeremy Corbyn was just one of those able to mine a rich vein of class-war gold.
In that most potent of class war dramas, ‘An Inspector Calls’, Eva Smith, pregnant by the lad of the manor house, is denied poor relief by the Lothario’s mother, chair of the charity committee. There are two sides to this. The Mum comes out as hard-hearted and contributing to Eva’s suicide but you have to ask why the spineless son of the house doesn’t fulfil the most ancient of social obligations and provide for his sexual partner and offspring. An updated version of Priestley’s masterpiece might have the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Mother’s role cutting the WTC of a single mother, with, lurking behind the arras, DWP Minister Iain Duncan-Smith, the sexual partner as absent and anonymous as Trigger’s father in ‘Only Fools and Horses,’ identified as “some soldiers” on the birth certificate. One can only dream.
The WTC farrago had me attempting to emulate Frank Field. As Tony Blair’s Welfare Minister the venerable MP set about “thinking the unthinkable”. He lasted only a few months in the job and Blair later reflected that his thoughts were less unthinkable than unfathomable. Perhaps I will go the same way.
Amid the wreckage of George Osborne’s WTC car crash, he and his friends kept telling us they were promoting a high wage, low tax and low welfare economy. As a concept, what’s not to like? However, his WTC proposals turned out to be just tinkering with the system to save a few bob. Administrations of all stripes have avoided addressing the underlying truth that poverty is only partly caused by lack of income. Many people are unable to look after themselves let alone their children. It is often the case that the parent or parents, however well-meaning, do not have the skills to give the kids a decent chance in life. It’s only partly about money. Sometimes, for example, it is language. In many schools the children have such poor vocabularies that it is a lottery whether they will understand the wording of GCSE questions, let alone know the answers. The battleground of the recent WTC farrago has been hard-working families receiving less income. Would it make more sense to recast the issue as a battle for improving the life chances of children in poverty? And if this is indeed a more worthwhile issue to debate, is not the WTC reduction just a tangential scattergun with some winners and some losers? Now Osborne is back in his den working out some tweaks. Much better if he wraps into his welfare cuts some measures to help the recipients get back on their feet without recourse to state handouts.
Kids Company was an attempt by successive administrations to address the photo opportunity aspects of the problem. Being snapped as the buddy of the photogenic and heart-warming Camila Batmanghelidjh achieved the political goals until the public became aware that she could address only a small tip of the child poverty iceberg and that the operation was out of control. She is useful now only as a scapegoat and as such is likely to be stripped of her CBE. Lobbing some cash at a media phenomenon does not seem to be the way to go.
There may be mileage in the idea of sheltered housing similar to that enjoyed by the aged and the disabled. They accept that they are not able to do all of the things they need to do, so surrender some of their independence for increased security. How off-the-wall is it to suggest that people who cannot support themselves and their families without state benefits should be relocated to institutions where they can be cared for and helped back into that state of wage-earning, taxpaying Nirvana that causes Iain Duncan-Smith to pump the air like a football fan? It’s a thought and admittedly one where the “I”s need dotting and “T”s crossing. Before you ask “are you mad?” please see if you can come up with a better way of helping people turn their lives round.
Sadly, there will be no clever and enlightened measures in Osborne’s autumn statement because he has no interest in helping the poor, working or otherwise. While they keep coming up with benefits cuts that just bash the poor without showing them a light at the end of the tunnel, the Tories are sleepwalking to defeat in 2020. While they repeat until they are blue in the face as well as livery, the mantra that they have a mandate to cut, the latter-day sea green incorruptible will be revving up the tumbrils.
