Starmer has put the final nail in the coffin for British aspiration

 

The party clearly has a problem with providing definitions for obvious terms

25 October 2024 1:00pm BST

Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/10/24

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On the plus side, at least Keir Starmer did not define a “working person” as “someone who identifies as a working person.”

Such circular logic has already landed the Prime Minister and many others on the Left in difficulty when it comes to the fraught – and seemingly impossible – task of defining what a woman is in these pronoun-obsessed times. And now Labour has decided that defining the over-used term “working people” is every bit as difficult.

Before we examine Starmer’s own eyebrow-raising definition of the term, given during an interview while attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa, consider his deputy’s efforts at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. Angela Rayner suggested that “working people” could be defined as that group of people failed by the last Conservative government. 

That’s quite a broad definition. It’s not even a definition, technically – more of a broad identification. And while it had her Labour colleagues baying like over-excited seals when the keeper brings out the bucket of fish, it doesn’t take us any further forward.

Given how frequently politicians of all parties use the term, you would think one of them would have been able to define it by now. Starmer has now given it a go, but it would be fair to say that his efforts have not exactly helped his government.

Asked if asked if he would include in his own definition people who get all or part of their income from assets, he replied: “Well, they wouldn’t come within my definition.”

A few days before a tax-grabbing Budget that is expected to squeeze an extra £35 billion out of taxpayers, with speculation that Capital Gains Tax on shares and second properties are high on the chancellor’s list of targets, this is very bad news indeed for anyone who has invested in these particular assets.

In recent years, the Labour Party has allowed its historic prejudices to dictate policy remedies. There is plenty of evidence that its tax raid on private schools, for example, will have little impact on the truly wealthy, but will make life much more difficult for parents already struggling to scrape together monthly school fees in order to give their children a decent education. But too many in the party – and, sadly, in its leadership – see such people as class traitors for using the private education sector at all, and therefore as deserving of zero sympathy.

There’s a disturbing element of class envy in Starmer’s comments too. If someone can afford to “write a cheque to get out of difficulties” (does anyone use cheques nowadays?) then that is another telltale sign that they cannot be defined as a “working person”.

What absurd Monty Python dystopia have we entered?

Let’s be honest: the only reason the Labour Party even uses the term “working people” or even “hard-working people” (the latter term isn’t as popular as it used to be, presumably because its use risks giving offence to lazy working people) is because it can no longer use the term “working class”, which is now the exclusive reserve of university lecturers and weird, hard-Left Marxist activists who spend their Saturday mornings selling revolutionary newspapers outside Tesco. 

The party formed by the trade unions to represent the working classes in parliament no longer feels comfortable using the term because it recognises it as exclusionary towards the middle classes – the people all the parties, including Labour, actually prioritise. Also, “working class” is as hard to define as “working people”.

But if you insist on using a term like “working people”, you should at least know how to define it in a way that’s not going to become a drag on your own government’s popularity. At which point, we need to return to the flailing of the Prime Minister.

In essence, Starmer has hammered the final nail into the coffin of his party’s former championing of aspiration. If you are well off enough to have set aside enough savings to give yourself a modicum of financial security, if you have invested in shares or – God forbid! – in rental property, then you are beyond the pale for this government. Ministers used to fret about voters’ reluctance to save for a rainy day; they even came up with clever banking products to encourage us to do so.

Now it turns out that if you followed that advice, if you now have enough spare cash to “sign a cheque” to meet some unforeseen expense, then you are no longer a “working person”.

We are left with the impression – and let me say right away that this impression is so absurd and counter-intuitive that it simply cannot be true, however much the evidence points in this direction – that wealth and success are anathema to this government. 

We must conclude that this current crop of ministers is far more comfortable with voters who are constantly stressing over this month’s bills than with a nation that is relaxed and confident about their financial situation. And if you aspire to be part of the latter, prepare to be targeted by a government that regards you as part of the problem, not the solution.