The problem isn’t ordinary people having it too cushy, it’s years of political infighting, economic sclerosis and self-delusion
If there’s one thing wrong with Britain today, it’s that life is just too damn easy. Our real problem is that we’ve just been too spoiled, too mollycoddled, and now won’t pull our weight. Or so, anyway, parts of the Conservative party would dearly like you to think.
A brief analysis by the rightwing thinktank Civitas, concluding that over half of Britons now live in households that receive more from the state in benefits and services than they contribute via taxes, was energetically hyped up by the Daily Mail today as proof of a “something for nothing” culture sweeping the nation, smothering entrepreneurship by some vaguely unexplained means and generally triggering moral decline. “Lockdown changed the psyche of the British people,” the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith told the paper mournfully. “For all those years we told them you can’t get something for nothing, and all of a sudden they did.” So who could they be, these pampered freeloaders who aren’t contributing their fair share?
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
