UK inequality rising more quickly than under Thatcher – report

[blacksunday]

The UK government’s welfare cuts and changes to taxation have encouraged economic inequality so intensely that they amount to ‘speeded-up Thatcherism.’ The divide between rich and poor is widening faster than in the 1980s, according to a new report.

The slashing of UK welfare benefits and simultaneous cuts in tax credits means that inequality will have soared twice as fast by 2015 than it did under the 1980s Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, according to a Fabian society report to be published on Monday and previewed in the Independent on Sunday.

Working-age families with children will be particularly hard-hit in the coming years, according to the report, written by economist Howard Reed. He laid out the impact of Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition policies on household income, drawing the conclusion that the poorest families in the UK are on a path to losing some 12 percent of their average income.

However, the UK’s second wealthiest income bracket are set to lose a mere three percent of their net income, illustrating the backwardness of the set of policies. Council Tax is used as an example in the report, which points out how it charges low-to-middle income families a considerably higher percentage of their disposable income than the richest British households.

It is “quite possible that the impact of the coalition’s tax and benefit measures would be as bad for inequality as the Thatcher government’s record, despite the fact that, by 2015, David Cameron will have been Prime Minister for less than half as long as Margaret Thatcher was,” said Reed, comparing it to a “speeded-up action replay of Thatcherism.”

Thatcher’s premiership was renowned for high unemployment and social unrest, while being criticized by opponents for promoting a culture of greed.

Reed went on to underline the Liberal Democrat’s complicit role in the disparity of wealth.

“This may come as a particular shock to Liberal Democrats in the government, many of whom spent the 1980s railing against [this] kind of increase in inequality,” Reed said.

The Liberal Democrats enabled the Conservative Party to form a coalition government in 2010. At the time, they set out the party’s general election manifesto promises, telling a London audience that “our manifesto will hardwire fairness into British society.”

The Fabian Society declared the need for different political parties to take action. “This research reveals that income inequality is set to rise sharply in this parliament. But since 2010 barely a word has been heard from the Labour Party on equality, certainly compared to past generations,” Andrew Harrop, general secretary of the Fabian Society, told the newspaper.

“Faced with a Thatcher-style inequality boom, Labour must rediscover its egalitarian core and never forget that redistribution must be part of the answer,” he said.

rt.com/news/uk-inequality-growth-thatcher-382/

What a blacksunday this is …. now a propaganda report from the ‘Russia Today’ news service, controlled by Russia’s President Putin looking to re establish the old Soviet Union, who hates the Conservatives/ Cameron for opposing him in the Ukraine – that Labour used to be so close in the good ‘old days’, especially the trade union movement, where the head of the TUC was a Soviet agent;

”We came close to losing our democracy in 1979”
www.spectator.co.uk/features/3665728/we-came-close-to-losing-our-democracy-in-1979/

”Douglas Eden reveals the extraordinary penetration of the 1970s Labour movement by pro-Soviet trade unionists and the extent of Callaghan’s toleration of the hard Left”

I wonder what they reported under the New old Labour, when inequality rose when money was no object but was spent on fat a fat target government, like some Old Soviet Union satellite state?

Jan 2010; ”Embarrassment for Brown as major report reveals inequality has increased under Labour”
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245080/Embarrassment-Brown-major-report-reveals-inequality-increased-Labour.html

”The gap between rich and poor has widened under Labour, a major new Government report will say next week.”

”The 450-page study by the National Equality Panel is expected to report that the billions of pounds poured into extra benefits, tax credits and anti-poverty drives over the last 12 years have failed to reverse the rise in inequality.”

”The findings are a major embarrassment for Gordon Brown who has adopted a controversial ‘class war’ election strategy designed to position Labour as the party of equality.”

”Privately, ministers already conceded that Labour will miss its self-imposed targets for reducing both child poverty and fuel poverty.”

Clearly Putin’s ‘Russia Today’ sees an new opportunity with Ed Miliband, funded by the trade unions adopting the Old Labour policies that made such a pigs ear of our economy in the 1970’s – when the trade unions even attacked the Labour Party – and the people who had enough, elected Thatcher.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

But what ARE Labour’s policies on welfare/benefits, as they appear to be quite tough and have plans to cut deeper than the Conservatives, but clearly say the OPPOSITE to get elected, how policy despicable is that?

March 2010; ”Alistair Darling: we will cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher

October 2013; “Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits, promises new welfare chief”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/12/labour-benefits-tories-labour-rachel-reeves-welfare

“Rachel Reeves vows to cut welfare bill and force long-term jobless to take up work offers or lose state support”

August 2013; “Labour to substantially cut benefits bill if it wins power in 2015”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/21/labour-to-cut-benefits-bill-2015

”Labour will cut the benefits bill "quite substantially" and more effectively than the Tories if it wins power in 2015, the shadow work and pensions secretary said on Tuesday”

”Liam Byrne, a Labour frontbencher, said the coalition's welfare reforms were failing to cut costs enough, and called for cross-party talks to "save" some of the government's key schemes.”

Labour under Miliband desperate for power, seems as trustworthy at Russia's Putin.

That's nice. This isn't a thread about New Labour.

I was just thinking when reading something about Thatcher the other day that, say what you will about her, at least she didn't try things like bedroom tax and the wholesale attack on legal aid and help for the disabled that Cameron has been responsible for.

blacksunday .... What you and your posted article are about, is in the propagation of a highly inaccurate myth that Conservative administrations in 1979 and 2010 inherited functioning, sustainable and balanced economies from the Labour Party.

And out of some sick ideological need, the Conservatives scythe away at the poor/welfare – rather than turn around Labour’s broken economies before we need the IMF bailouts (and anti progressive blanket spending cuts we see elsewhere even today) AGAIN.

In 1979, three years after the Labour Party struggling to borrow called in the IMF to financially bail this country out, Labour’s legacy to Thatcher was a totally broken UK economy with inflation/interest rates around 20%, ridiculously high taxation e.g. the poorest paying a 32% minimum rate of income tax, factoring closing due to those factors and millions of work days lost through strikes – with (as the link above shows) workers being led by the TUC with many leaders within showing more allegiance to the old Russian Soviet Union, than this country and queen.

So while your article mentions “Thatcher’s premiership was renowned for high unemployment and social unrest”, similar to the 2010 economic and financial dogs dinner Labour left ONCE AGAIN, it fails to mention that when Conservatives inherit broken economies there ARE NO EASY/PAINLESS solution to fix them, otherwise Labour administrations would be electorally brave enough to sort out every problem they created, themselves.

In 2010 Labour, Brown, and his cabinet of incompetents, KNEW from Thatcher the voters like to blame the party with the rebalancing of the economy solutions, not the numb-nuts that got us into the mess - and the Labour Party despicably then spent 5-years trying to shift the blame to the Conservative coalition – opposing everything e.g. spending cuts to reduce Labour’s £157 billion deficit, but then, having more front than Brighton Pier, then bitch “the Conservative’s have broken their promise, and only cut it by £70 odd billion”.

This pathetic Labour political opportunism and misinformation found in every one of the two Ed’s speeches, can also be found in welfare, where one minute Labour’s Ministers and MP’s are saying how SAVAGE the Conservative’s are cutting welfare, the next month they are saying ‘the Conservative’s have spent £25 billion MORE on welfare/benefits’ – so the opportunism, nay political hypocrisy, is staggering.

You and your article want this board to believe that similar to the economy in 2010, everything welfare related Labour left was ‘balanced’, by responsible governance – rather than some total disregard for taxpayers money e.g. over 900,000 claiming sickness benefit that would not pass a medical - that combined with a Labour’s bloated and expensive quangocrat government, left a annual budget deficit around THREE TIMES that of the ‘mother’ of all fat States, France.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9963012/900000-choose-to-come-off-sickness-benefit-ahead-of-tests.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html
”Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show.”

The Fabian Society appears to have a 5- year crystal ball on inequality, yet NO ONE predicted the G7 beating economic growth/new employment/tax cut success of Conservative administration under Cameron’s leadership, Osborne’s chancellorship, Clegg’s left wing bravery doing what was right for the country, the quality of the whole team fixing the UK problems – all OPPOSED by the Labour leadership in parliament, on virtually every policy that achieved those results.

It should not need a crystal ball that those who having had 13-years and say on key policies with a massive understatement “we made mistakes”, in the good times, when financial bubble economy tax receipts were huge (including the increased in inequality by showing welfare/benefits money) that they do NOT have the solutions for ANYTHING from 2015 to 2020 – other than finish the UK’s decline they left in 2010, and we’ll all be on benefits, with no companies left here to pay the bill.

Icimoi ... You are totally correct Thatcher would certainly not have introduced the 'Spare Room Subsidy' or so called 'bedroom tax', designed to free up some of the 800,000 unused bed rooms in council etc housing.

But Thatcher would not have left 5 million of 'the many' needing council social homes in 2010, and worse still, without a Labour Housing Policy in 2010 to even 'kin acknowledge the problem they left, never mind fix it.

So does the last Labour government and other bunches of socialist hypocrites who say that THEY look after ‘the many’ and the Conservatives only look at ‘the few’ want to look at the social housing record of ‘the free market’ providers under Thatcher in difficult times vs socialism flushed with cash - and be ashamed of their hollow claims?

Taking council/social homes; using Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLC) figures, and using the full 18-year term of the last Conservative government (including a few recessions) but only the first 11-years under Labour (before the worst recession in nearly a century), the Conservatives averaged 50,761 new social housing sector homes a year, while the last Labour government averaged 24,299 per year.

Putting the decline rate in context, the new social housing sector build HIGH was 88,530 new homes in 1980 (around the time ‘Right to Buy’ was a policy) and the LOW was 130 new social homes in 2004 at the height of an immigration boom – no doubt STILL selling off Right to Buy Homes, with a resulting large NET REDUCTION of council housing stock for that year.

So Icimoi rather than deflect at an emergency attempt to find bedrooms for those that needed it, pray tell the board; why DID the party that disingenuously SAY they look after the poor, but facts shows whether by 1979 or 2010 they leave them in a worse position - leave 5 million needing social homes WITH NO PLANS in their 2010 manifesto to address it?