Why Have the Tories Cut Universal Credit?

The Tories' decision to carry on with their Universal Credit cut is devastating. Charlotte spells out the consequences for millions of people. Over a thousand pounds a year, gone. It's savage, and the Tories are hardly brimming with sympathy for those at the sharp end. "It was only temporary" is the smug, stock response, implying that if UC recipients hadn't been preparing themselves for the loss of up to a fifth of their income, they probably had it coming anyway. UC payments can easily be made up by getting a better job, as if the million or so vacancies available aren't predominantly low paid and need UC to subsidise them anyway. And for those who can't work for whatever reason? The Tories are making £500m available to local authorities to help. Accessing that cash is sure not to have gatekeepers like stringent bureaucratic hoops, means testing, and humiliating meetings with advisors lecturing poor people on how best they should spend their money.

The Tories know it's wrong. Rishi Sunak's near silence at the start of the week about what he was doing spoke louder than anything else to come out of Tory conference. They know about the hardship, the mental anguish, the kids going hungry, the cold homes and empty cupboards, and families driven to breaking point. These stories present themselves to them in letters, emails, and constituency surgeries. It's a tide of misery they're doing everything to encourage, and they carry on doing it. Which begs the question: why? It's not like they're naive or mistaken and would come to their senses if someone stuck a Child Poverty Action Group briefing under their nose. Labour MPs reading out constituency correspondence in the Commons, and even lobbying from some green Tory backbenchers won't shift them. Then what? Is it a question of evil? Refusing to confront the consequences of their actions and telling lies to cover up their indifference certainly looks like it. But it goes beyond morality. It's a question of class interest.

As explained previously, there are two kinds of capitalist realism. The first is the "common sense", technocratic sort (not often you see those phrases paired together). This is where most of the Labour, liberal, and centrist establishments are at. British capitalism has to grow, and it works best when there are more people in work with higher wages, large amounts of disposable income, and the government regulates the lot to ensure broadly functional outcomes. If some of these aren't moved by the plight of people having to suck up the UC cut, they are likely to be opposed on grounds that it takes money out of pockets, depresses spending, and retards economic growth. This outlook is pervasive, and its adherents assume the Tories share this view. They cannot understand why the self-described party of business are stamping on the first fizzles of post-lockdown economic recovery. It's puzzling.

The answer lies in the other capitalist realism: the class politics. The Tory mindset does not see a social system in which rising tides float all boats, but a zero sum game of the haves and the have nots. They not only want to keep the haves as the haves, they understand their power and position is preserved at the expense of those without it. The Tory objective, whether it was the patrician Harold Macmillan, the class warrior Margaret Thatcher, or the decrepit, decadent government of Boris Johnson is the preservation of capitalist relations of production. Let's consider another recent example.

No sooner had the Tories brought in the Job Retention Scheme, Rishi Sunak and his allies were musing aloud about cutting it to ribbons. They were terrified by the very idea of millions of people sat at home either "doing nothing" on furlough, or carrying on their work out of sight of the boss. Just imagine workers knocking their spreadsheets on the head to catch some This Morning action with an appropriately distanced Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. What concerned the Treasury, and Johnson himself, was a relaxation of workplace discipline. The greater autonomy people had about when and how they would do their work, the discovery that life could go on without the beady panopticism of shopfloor/office tyranny and that, on the whole, workers enjoyed spending more time away from work and with their families, pets, and questionable TV viewing habits. The work ethic might be damaged! People won't want to come back! Where does this leave the authority and hold of the employer? Potentially much weaker than it used to be. And so, last summer, the government began campaigning for the return to work, with Sunak making out the office was a fab 'n' groovy place to hang out and not a dive people go to because they are paid to. Johnson started muttering darkly about forcing people back too, while others in his class were hyping the end of the workplace. That a mass return to work would have meant more infections and more deaths were secondary to the health of class relations.

How does this help explain the UC cut? For one, many Tories believe social security is too generous because one can eke out a miserable, straitened existence on it. If it were lower, the wage floor would be lower and bosses could get away with paying less. Meaning a higher rate of exploitation, labour's greater dependence on capital and therefore, more profits. From this twisted mindset the £20 uplift was an unacceptable barrier. Second, because the new UC was more money this increased, albeit marginally, the bargaining power of individual workers. With a tiny bit more to fall back on, employers had to offer more, such as money, flexible working that suited the employee, and guaranteed hours, all of which nibbled at the overweening power of capital in the job market. As a hyper class conscious organisation alert to how the scratch of concession could lead to the gangrene of a confident, collectivising work force, this would not do. And therefore we have the Tories thanking millions of essential workers who spent the pandemic risking their lives on the minimum wage being forced out of pocket. All to precent the well heeled from having to fork out a bit more and negotiate with their workers on a more level playing field.

And this is before you even consider another important factor. With labour shortages across the economy and with few EU workers running to save the government from its self-inflicted wounds, pushing the wage floor back down to pre-pandemic levels does not allow the low paid to leverage their position in a tight labour market. With millions made poorer, the Tories know full well many will accept anything that's going at whatever stingy wage is offered. And from this, somehow the high wage, high skilled economy is going to spontaneously combust into being. Though it won't - it's just rhetoric to try and keep enough gullible voters fooled by the levelling up nonsense on board.

For the Tories, capitalism isn't a dynamic economic powerhouse requiring fearsome skills to manage, but a straightforward pyramid of class rule to be protected. This is what 200 years of modern Conservatism has taught us. They're serious about prosecuting their class interests. It's about time we matched that determination with some of our own.

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