Them Versus Us
By Dave Young
Uniquely for a prosperous social democratic European nation, Britain’s current government is, it seems, at war with its own people.
Consider a couple of environmental examples. Theresa May’s administration has lost a succession of major air quality and vehicle emissions test cases yet, even as those living, working and going to school suffer damage to physical and mental health, it
resist any strategy to challenge the hegemony of relentless traffic.
After removing powers to regulate fracking from local authorities, despite election pledges to increase local democracy, the state now sends peaceful protesters to jail for challenging the inalienable right of companies to pursue profit regardless of public opinion.
Exposed by campaigning newspapers, our government reluctantly puts its hands up to the Windrush scandal, but does little to resolve the injustice or alter a policy of institutionalised racism. Not the actions of maverick individuals, but built into the policy framework. Who on earth embarks on a consultation about compensation when people are demonstrably already unemployed, homeless, destitute and exiled?
This government has promoted anti-immigrant rhetoric, attacked citizens who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for up to 50 years and mendaciously created a climate of suspicion. Our local MP Amber Rudd resigned as Home Secretary in April, shortly after she’d “inadvertently misled” MPs over targets for removing ‘illegal immigrants’.
Freelance workers supported by trade unions take multinational companies to court in a bid to secure sick and holiday pay. Time and again the firms lose at employment tribunals, yet drivers complain of business as usual when the judgements aren’t subsequently enforced. Nor are they likely to be anytime soon given this cabinet’s avowed commitment to labour flexibility, management-speak for zero hours contracts.
Consider the notorious Personal Independence Payment tribunals where severely ill and disabled people struggle to retain already meagre benefits and over 60% of cuts are overturned on appeal. Where, in addition to harrowing tales of individual suffering, a climate of doubt and disbelief is deliberately fostered in the minds of the wider populace. Are these people really disabled, might they simply be skivers?
Most recently the government is in court again, this time concerning the diminution of special needs education. In East Sussex, Yorkshire, Surrey, Bristol and Hackney budgets to teach the most vulnerable children in our society are set to be slashed. No care, no compassion, austerity as a cloak for the progressive dismantling of the welfare state; part of the greater cynicism with which politicians treat young people. If you can hear a noise in the background it’s the sound of Rab Butler turning in his grave.
We’re wearily inured to ineptitude, such as the collapse of the railways (take a bow Chris Grayling); no longer surprised at shameless displays of personal ambition (looking at you Michael and Boris). But what sets so many of the current administration’s policies apart is the deliberate, vicious misanthropy.
Devoid of empathy, contemptuous of expert advice, this is divide and rule politics intended to appease saloon-bar bigots. Cruelty has all too frequently become the default mode of policy implementation, how Britain – the sixth most prosperous nation in the world – routinely marginalises, humiliates and divides its electorate.
The damage to the county’s infrastructure is awful enough – easy to destroy, a hard, slow and expensive process to rebuild – but it’s the long-term hurt to the nation’s psyche, where public trust has been squandered, that will take generations to recover – if it can recover at all.
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