Diversity & equality in business
The Guardian view on Boris Johnson's poverty plan: spread it widely?
Mr Johnson once thought 'destitution on a Victorian scale' might be a good thing. With Tory policies he may yet deliver such a dystopia
Tue 3 Dec 2019 13.29 EST Last modified on Thu 5 Dec 2019 11.33 EST
Boris Johnson campaigning in Salisbury on Tuesday. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
Did Boris Johnson watch Channel 4's documentary Growing Up Poor? He should have. The film is a seminal moment in television which has made people talk about the crisis of destitution that is hiding in plain sight in the UK, and how dreadful it is. In the programme, childhood dreams of being an actor or a solicitor jarred with tales of chronic poverty. There were bleak scenes of Dickensian hardship, as families living in squalor or with hungry children at a food bank explained how these situations had been precipitated by everyday catastrophes of bereavement, domestic violence and mental breakdown. The damaging trade-offs being made – of whether to eat or heat – are a shameful indictment of a country as wealthy as ours.
The prime minister does not care to be apprised of such things. Nor is he willing to accept the fact that since 2010-11, on the three main measures, UK child poverty has risen. Nor that the spread of penury has been driven by Conservative cuts and freezes to tax credits and benefits. The government's own Social Metrics Commission found that more than 4 million people in the UK are trapped in deep poverty, effectively destitute. This is a new phenomenon. Before 2012 the academic literature on the subject found little mention of destitution apart from among asylum seekers. Once the poor might have expected the welfare safety net to help them avoid deprivation. They now have no such guarantee. Austerity, low incomes and precarious jobs have made the poor newly vulnerable to unexpected financial shocks and the slide into desperate hardship.
Mr Johnson became a Tory MP in 2001. He has held elected office continuously since then and been a steadfast defender of the rich and powerful, arguing no one has "stuck up for the bankers" as much as he did. He claimed that a cabinet minister's annual salary of £141,000 is not enough to live on. How does he think a couple with two children manage on £140 a week, the level of a destitution wage?
"For the duty of the truly democratic politician is just to see that people are not destitute; for destitution is a cause of deterioration of democracy," wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who advocated a form of redistribution to alleviate suffering and save the system. As a classicist, Mr Johnson would know this. Yet he has abjured such notions. He once argued that "sure-fire destitution on a Victorian scale" ought to be imposed on "young girls" to make them "think twice about having a baby". This is a repugnant attitude, especially from a man who will not say how many children he has. In Mr Johnson's world the rich's failures ought to be forgiven; the poor's punished.
He threatens to tilt Britain's political system away from being a democracy to being an oligarchy, where the rich buy political clout. Mr Johnson's victory in the Tory leadership race was built on outspending his rivals. In the first week of the current election campaign, the Tories raked in, largely from six billionaires, £5.6m – 26 times more than Labour managed. It looks like the rich can purchase from the Tories economic policies that benefit them: lower taxes, more tax deductions, higher capital gains with lighter regulations. As Branko Milanović puts it in his new book, Capitalism, Alone, such "policies increase the likelihood that the rich will stay on top [leading to] the creation of a permanent upper class". The manifestos make this clear: poverty is mentioned 40 times in Labour's; 24 times by the Liberal Democrats and only three times by the Tories. Mr Johnson uses conservative social positions to encourage poor voters to betray their economic interests. Brexit Britain pines for the past. Yet a century ago the free market created squalid slums and soup kitchens. Today we have tent cities and food banks. It must be a concern for the country that if he wins, Mr Johnson's campaign nostalgia is likely to become prophecy.