Polly Toynbee writes with her usual Tory-bashing gusto about this week‘s Broken Britain theme. Having dismissed the Wire analogy, she goes on to say, “Broken Britain week laid out profound social problems still unsolved; but without policies to improve deep poverty and dysfunction, the Tories raise expectations that will return to haunt them.”
Well… not quite. I can see what she’s getting at; we’ve all experienced politicians promising the earth and failing to deliver. That’s part of the problem – no-one believes much that any politicians say, and we’re all hugely cynical about their capacity to change things for the better. But yes, I want politicians to remember what they’ve promised and to bust a gut to fulfil those promises.
The principles are there, the policies are coming. But what Polly Toynbee and I think most of the Labour Party have failed to understand is that Conservative ideas on mending Broken Britain are not motivated by calculation or by some kind of de haut en bas Lady Bountiful act. They are based on a sincere belief that helping people to help themselves is the best way to improve life for everyone.
What has Labour achieved in their 12 years in power? Simply throwing hundreds of complicated forms at people clearly isn’t the answer. Perhaps Ms Toynbee is so disappointed at Labour’s failure to fulfil her dreams that she refuses to acknowledge the reality of the social problems in our country.
Because as Chris Grayling outlined in his speech, the poorest in our society are the hardest hit by crime. Nearly 2 million children live in households where no-one works. Just this week, Frank Field uncovered yet another Brownian scheme to claw back money from recipients of housing benefit. And the VAT cut was – despite all of Labour’s rhetoric – aimed at people with disposable income to spare to go shopping with, not help for those struggling to feed their families.
Polly Toynbee’s article is underpinned by an admission that Labour have failed so badly in their years in government that there is no money to pay for anything that might help mend Broken Britain. For the leading light of the Guardianista faction, that is an absolutely appalling judgement on the last twelve years.
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Toynbee writes: “There are indeed 1.25 million people who have never worked since 1996, almost all in the 50-64 age group, mostly sick, disabled, retired or women who never went to work when their children grew up.”
In Labour’s scramble to protect minorities who are perfectly skilled at protecting themselves, are people who are over 50, disabled or who have forsaken work to bring up children the new disenfranchised from the labour market?
The New Labour project has been such an abject failure that now Guardianistas and their fellow travellers can attack the Conservatives only upon the basis that they are not going to do any better in government than Labour. However, the “Tories will be useless” aspersion will blow the wrong whistle for the majority of the electorate.