Ever since Wat Tyler took a dagger for his pains in 1381, one precept has more or less held good in English (and I mean ‘English’) politics. The solution to worsening poverty is almost never to adopt the expedient of ensuring poor people have enough to live with dignity.
The consequences of this are writ large in our law centres. Angry and despairing solicitors – echoing personal finance guru Martin Lewis – tell the Gazette they are running out of options to help people suffering not as a result of their own indolence and fecklessness, but simple lack of money.
I dislike the term ‘cost-of-living’ crisis, which is euphemistic and – like the limited measures announced yesterday to address it – provisional. This is systemic. After the 2008 crisis, of course, your money and mine was helicoptered upon the City in an unprecedented irruption of state largesse. In the Square Mile, a dose of socialism is never unwelcome if the right sort of people are its beneficiaries. Bankers’ bonuses this year are the biggest they have been since the crash.
This isn’t party-political. A scrambled Labour party, once again preoccupied with deciding what it’s actually for, recently signed up to a real-terms benefit cut. This places Keir Starmer well to the right of former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who wants benefits to be immediately uprated with inflation.
The blurring of party lines can sometimes herald momentous change. Nimrod Ben-Cnaan, head of policy and profile at the Law Centres Network, goes so far as to call for a ‘Beveridge moment’. Like Keynes, Beveridge was a liberal, which is often overlooked.
Such a sea change seems extremely unlikely in England, though it is at least heartening to see cross-party thinktank the Social Market Foundation call for the reversal of the civil legal aid cuts imposed by LASPO. Denying people timely advice often costs the state more in the long run. Who knew?
Speak for England, Nimrod. But not, perhaps, for Wales. The devolved government in Cardiff is increasingly adamant that taking control of justice is essential for Wales to follow a very different approach to alleviating want. Westminster remains unmoved.
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