Sweet (unsubsidised) child of my-ee-ay-ee-ine

I have waited to see David Cameron’s reaction to the predictable fulminations from the right-wing press over the cutting of child allowance for earners in the highest tax band – the so-called ‘middle’ of the country that only represents the top 15% richest people (some people need to go back to school) – though The Guardian had a worthless front-page headline of George Osborne cutting “child support for all,” a pernicious twist on how this child grant is no longer universal, with the false implication that everyone will lose it. Cameron’s response that the married couples’ allowance is to be restored to offset the loss to those families where at least one individual earns £45,000 or more is welcome. The Labour Party deride this proposal as ‘social engineering’ (pot, kettle, black, anyone?) and Vince Cable, among others, has called it ‘a bribe’ – like child allowances aren’t ‘bribes’ at all, are they? Restoring marriage allowance furthermore is a socially cohesive policy that helps children as the overwhelming majority of studies (as close to consensus as you can get in social sciences) suggests that children benefit when parents stay together and couples stay together, on average, longer than if they are unmarried. It is a clever announcement by Cameron while giving two-fingers to the liberal establishment who way too materialistic. And, Harriet Harman, it’s proven in previous recessions that when households experience financial strain, the divorce rate goes up (the last credit crisis bucking the trend, maybe because marriage rates were already low anyway). People say most marriages so often now are not for life, so what’s the point of it at all? Most jobs are no longer for life; if you take the same attitude to employment as you do to marriage, are you going to throw yourself on the dole your whole life (some people find no hardship in this)? This country is becoming increasingly selfish, everyone thinking only of what benefits them – how is that progressive?
But back to the main issue at hand. On Monday night the BBC pulled off the impressive trick of making the government minister look sympathetic. Philip Hammond, Transport Secretary, was hauled on largely because before the general election he had defended universal child allowance. His argument here was that this was fairer than means-testing parents and Osborne’s policy was fairer still – facing down Jeremy Paxman’s fusillade that this was sophistry. But the brutality of Pax Jeremia was not the crucial factor in giving kudos to Hammond. Two other guests invited before a select group of Tory activists were Polly Toynbee and some Wall Street Journal hack. Toynbee is renowned as a standard-bearer of the (occasionally smug) journalistic left so she could be expected to be as snidey towards the current Government as the Guardian header and was, while the WSJ is as far right-wing as you can go whilst still staying in the mainstream. From what I have read from their contributors, they practise intellectual rigamortis, than rigour.
The Tories in the audience weren’t particularly fazed by the top 15% wage-earners losing their child allowance – maybe because if you want to pay tuition fees to get your child through public school or you want to take that annual holiday to Thailand and you don’t like big government, perhaps, just perhaps, you shouldn’t rely on government handouts. With this model of moderateness, the extremism of Toynbee and the WSJ man was more evident. Paxo’s pronouncement that they had been ‘struck dumb’ as he tried to whip up the ‘controversy’ was not inclined to win them over to his style. Toynbee argued the Marxist angle of universalism, the WSJ guy said over and over again “Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair understood the middle classes. I don’t think this new government does,” with nothing to back this up – proof that thick, rich kids don’t need to have thousands of pounds extra to push them through private education just so they can go on to have positions of prominence at the Wall Street Journal. The middle-classes are those who earn in the middle-range which in the UK per capita is £27,000 per annum, far below the £45,000 threshold above which child allowance will not be paid. Take away the top 15% and that figure drops considerably. Just because you are not of the aristocracy and therefore not upper-class does not make you middle-class while you earn a packet – nouveau riche is the closest approximation. This Coalition understands the other 85% of this country – the true middle-classes amongst this. The right-wing press have incorrectly inflated the average wage band to reflect their own ideas of status – when a Daily Telegraph commentator says that to live on £100,000 a year in London is a pittance, even a struggle, it is reminiscent of Alan Duncan’s ill-advised remark that after the expenses scandal MPs had to live on rations. Duncan gets a dressing-down but the right-wing papers march on.
One member of the audience, reflecting on that it is mothers to whom the child allowance is paid, said that we had moved on from the 1960s when husbands might waste the money on booze, womanising and drug-taking. Toynbee tore into this saying that there are still men who booze, womanise and take drugs, to which Hammond wryly interjected “on the highest tax wage band,” utterly routing Toynbee in the eyes of all but herself. That brought it back to the fact that only the 15% best-off will suffer in this situation and that universalism is a blunt instrument to redress social imbalances.
Paxman took Hammond to task over that this policy wasn’t means-tested – but when benefits are means-tested it is the poorest, least well-educated who lose out because they are discouraged by the forms in the first place or cannot complete them through a lack of understanding and will not ask an anonymous outside agency to help them. It is the wealthy, confident and/or intelligent who find them a doddle or aren’t afraid to get help if they stumble. Means-testing is anti-working class. Paxo gave a remarkably easy ride to the two other journalists present and one suspects that he too is miffed by the policy. As Boris Johnson did earlier in the day when he tamed Paxman, in between the clownish ad hominem attacks that left Paxman with bemused grinning, he questioned the BBC pitbull’s salary when it threatened to (de?)generate into another Paxman vs Michael Howard encounter.
Ultimately, what swung it for Philip Hammond was that the two printhounds in Toynbee and the WSJ representative agreed that Osborne should not be carrying through this policy, without giving any caveats. A key case of when the political spectrum is a circle as extremists agree and nullify themselves in the process.