HERE'S a challenge to the Prime Minister: Come on, Gordon, hit me! Use that big clunking fist and thump me where it hurts – in my wallet. If you are the man I think you are, you should be causing a little more pain to me and everybody else who is comfortably off. And you should really be socking it to the super-rich who became obscenely wealthy under your regime as Chancellor.
Inviting the Government to dip deeper into my finances may seem an unusual form of masochism, but I do not mind one more ache – and it might not be much more than a slight pang – to help those who are really suffering.
We should be feeling twinge
s of conscience at the latest revelations about the number of children and old people living in poverty in our midst. Already, we appear to have forgotten the low-paid who are hardest hit by the 10p tax-band debacle.
We may complain about the higher costs of driving ourselves around, flying abroad on holiday and keeping the fridge-freezer filled but, for those on the poorest incomes, it is a question of hand-to-mouth existence and putting any kind of food on the table.
A Labour council leader who went to a ward meeting at a school the other night was met by the cleaners, their pay-slips in hand. They were all between £4 and £8 a week worse off. When he asked the worst affected what it meant to her in real terms, she told him: "We can't have a proper meal the night before payday."
The story took me back to my own childhood when we got toast-and-cheese as our main meal on the eve of payday. When my mother came out of the linoleum factory gate the next night with her pay-packet, we went straight to the Co-op to buy food – and we might even get a fish supper for tea. If, a generation later, our country still has hungry households, where is the progress?
It would be deeply disappointing if what prevents the Prime Minister from helping the victims of deprivation is political calculation and the perceived need to keep 'Middle Britain' happy. Brown is, after all, the politician-idealist who has throughout his career railed against "the chronic inequalities of wealth", from the Red Book On Scotland 40 years ago to the Crewe by-election disaster when he said he had got the message and promised "fairness for all".
Until now, Labour could be proud of their record of lifting a million pensioners and 600,000 children out of poverty. The hallmark of Brown's chancellorship was that he redistributed wealth, mostly by stealth and sometimes more blatantly. The Labour party brags: "Hard-working families have been the big winners from 10 years of growing employment, low inflation and low interest rates".
But the times they are a-changin'. Last week's data shows it only takes marginal amounts to make them slip back – another 300,000 elderly falling below the poverty line as they struggle with higher fuel and food bills, making a total of 2.5 million; a second successive 100,000 jump in the number of children living below the poverty threshold; and the gap between the richest and poorest families growing wider. The 2007 Scottish Household Survey found a fifth have an annual net income of under £10,000.
The plan to increase child benefit to more than £1,000 a year by 2010, promises to compensate those hit by the 10p tax fiasco and reformed housing benefit for low-earning parents are all very well. But they are jam tomorrow for families struggling to buy bread today because of rising food costs. And they are tinkering with a tax and benefits system that needs a complete overhaul.
The smallest rise in inflation is a major disaster for such families and we are told to expect a deep downturn in the economy over the next couple of years. Action has to be taken now to prevent still more sinking below the poverty level, never mind the extra £2.8bn a year needed to meet the 1999 target of halving child poverty by 2010.
Where is the money to come from? The previous Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, did not actually say he would "tax the rich until the pips squeak" – but something like that is needed. Squeezing the tax-dodgers, the non-doms, the multi-million-pound City bonuses and a windfall tax on oil company profits bloated by current prices. The rest of us with a bit of money and a social conscience can also afford to forfeit Treasury one-size-fits-all pay-outs.
For instance, the £200 Winter Heating Allowance paid to everyone over 60 irrespective of income will go up £50 this year. When Brown was Chancellor, I said I was spending mine on two cases of "internal heating" and was told gruffly that was not what he had in mind. My point was, if I can afford to spend it on booze why give me it? Why not means-test and give more to those in genuine need?
I live in one of the most affluent villages in Scotland, but last month South Lanarkshire Council sent me a cheque for £50. Similar cheques went to every pensioner household (including those living in million pound houses) as a "council budget boost". It is obscene that money went to those who could blow it on a round in the golf club bar, when schools and social services are going short.
Does all this sound dangerously like the S-word? If it is socialism, so be it. Ending poverty and inequality are what Gordon Brown went into politics for and, whether his premiership is short or long, he will want to be remembered for doing what is right. Who knows, it might win him the next election.
The full article contains 1005 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
