Politically Exploiting the Low Paid

Leading the polls and without the other parties laying a glove on him, on Tuesday Nigel Farage made a play for what should be the bedrock of Labour's coalition: low paid workers. He committed Reform to scrapping the two-child limit on child benefit and making the case for a more generous marriage tax break. He said these measures would not promote dependency on social security, but make life easier for the lowest paid. When was the last time a front bench Labour politician stated such an aspiration as plainly and clearly? For good measure, Farage also wants to reverse the cuts to Winter Fuel and increase the basic rate threshold to £20k.

The replies from the Tories and Labour have been predictably pathetic. Mel Stride accused Farage of abandoning "hard working families who live within their means", in what likely signals a renewed Tory interest in scrounger discourse and trying to put Farage on the wrong side of that. Unfortunately for them, the public appetite for more welfare spending lies in the opposite direction - guaranteeing the hole the Tories are in will only get deeper. Ellie Reeves accused Farage of promising a Liz Truss-style gambit and the chaos that entails, failing entirely to challenge Farage on his promise to raise the living standards of the worst off.

Looking across the continent, a small but significant part of the appeal of the extreme right is what political scientists call authoritarian welfarism. I.e. Talking up the usual divide-and-rule drivel one would expect of these formations, but buttressing their construction of the in-groups with material benefits that the out-groups are excluded from. And as they make such promises, for some who are hard-pressed by decades of rich-friendly, anti-worker policies the promise of more money, be it through social security transfers or tax cuts, and/or better/more housing is a tantalising offer. These parties are offering punters a rational choice that many can ill-afford to turn down. It's also more concrete than the nebulous promises of GDP growth raising living standards, as proffered by the centre left and centre right.

We've had experiments with the exclusion of "undeserving" recipients in this country. Following the Tories, New Labour scapegoated imagined cohorts of the feckless and the idle, with myths peddled about families who've shirked work for three generations. It was this that led to Labour developing the hated Work Capability Assessment for disabled people. This rhetoric shifted into high gear during the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, where old people were shielded from their cuts programme and everyone else were dealt new hands of exclusions, sanctions, and payment freezes. Under Boris Johnson, after the initial impact of Covid the first emergency measures rolled back were the suspension of welfare conditionalities, and now with Keir Starmer the government want to take social security away entirely from young people who "refuse to work". Whoever these are. And, of course, there are disability cuts too. If anything, what Farage is proposing is more generous than the skinflint policies that have characterised Tory and Labour approach to welfare - save the break from this during the Jeremy Corbyn interlude.

I'm not about to suggest Reform is outflanking the other parties from the left. The centrepiece of their platform - raising the tax threshold - is something of a tell. While more of the low paid have been drawn into paying income tax thanks to increases in the minimum wage, lifting the threshold is a nice bung for better off taxpayers too. Indeed, they are the ones that receive the full benefit from doing so. Second, minimising tax on the lower paid is a hidden subsidy for poverty pay employers. I.e. Why have businesses shell out more to their workers if abolishing PAYE sees pay packets go further? And how might Reform affect to pay for this? By stripping back other state responsibilities. Farage has occasionally ventured comments about wanting to see the NHS replaced by an insurance scheme. Undoubtedly, chopping down the civil service, wiping out non-statutory public services provided by councils, gutting preventative health budgets, crushing further and higher education, abandoning plans on transport and energy infrastructure, and borrowing for day-to-day spending are ways one might expect Reform to meet its new commitments. A true robbing Peter to pay Paul trick, a reactionary attack on the state's capacity to do things no different in kind to Tory attitudes toward the state. But with 'helping the poor' providing this reactionary, authoritarian project political cover.

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