How
much is a politician worth? According to MPs, the answer is “about four
times as much as the average worker”. This month, an anonymous
parliamentary survey found that most MPs wanted to see their £65,738
salary rise to roughly £86,250 – an increase of 32 per cent, putting
them squarely in the top 5 per cent of earners. That’s before you
include the second homes, travel, subsidised meals, perks and
entertainment that continue to cost the rest of us millions every year.
As most of us struggle with plummeting wages and living standards, the
more interesting question is: “Why aren’t there riots in the streets?”
In
case you’ve been out of the country or washing your socks for the past
four years, here’s some context: in 2009 every major political party in
Britain was rocked by an expenses scandal that led to a nationwide
crisis and helped kick off a series of street protests. Here we are in
2013, and not only are the same politicians still milking the system and
getting away with it, they’re actually asking for a large pay rise.
Meanwhile,
as social security is cut to starvation levels, the very rich will be
enjoying a 5 per cent tax cut from April. By this point, people like me
who point and squawk at social injustice for a living have repeated
phrases such as “it’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us”
until the words begin to lose all meaning. By this point, nobody’s
pretending any more.
There
may, in recent memory, have been a time when it was modish to pretend
that Britain was a land of opportunity where class was an outdated
concept and poverty merely relative, but that time is over. Most of us
know far too well that we’re living in a staggeringly unequal society,
one where the gulf between rich and poor is growing wider year on year.
Parents have begun to resign themselves to the idea that their children
will grow up to be poorer than them; young people leaving school are
gently abandoning the idea of a stable home, a secure job and a decent
wage. Why do we continue to accept this situation? Why – let’s be frank –
isn’t Parliament Square on fire?
We
put up with it in part for the same reason that our politicians feel it
entirely appropriate to request a 32 per cent pay rise in the middle of
a double-dip recession: because of a new morality of money and power
that justifies inequality. Since this government was elected in 2010,
the right-wing press has pumped out a torrent of propaganda declaring
that those on benefits are “shirkers”, whereas those who are rich and
powerful deserve their wealth, because of their “hard work”.
Most
people defending a salary rise for MPs and large bonuses for City
workers do so using the disclaimer that bankers and politicians “work
hard”. The test that has decided that a banker works 20 times as hard as
a teaching assistant has not been identified, because it doesn’t exist.
Undoubtedly,
our members of parliament work extremely hard. So do nurses, teachers
and call-centre workers. So do the police officers who this week are
having their starting salaries cut by £4,000 to £19,000 a year. And so
do the single parents and tax-credit recipients whose vital social
security payments MPs have voted to slash. How hard a person works is
not and never has been proportional to a person’s salary: it is, as
today’s politicians understand very well, proportional to their power
and privilege. We don’t like to talk about power in this country,
though; instead, we talk about “hard work”.
You
don’t need an in-depth grasp of post-Fordist economics to get this. The
single mum sobbing in the benefits office may or may not have had the
time to read Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom but she has
internalised its logic, and so have the rest of us: the idea that the
free market, despite all evidence to the contrary, rewards everyone
justly and therefore we all deserve what we end up with.
Right
now, when politicians speak of “workers” and “shirkers”, they mean
“rich” and “poor” – and they know which side they’re on. The logic of
work and power is turned on its head. Our leaders and the superrich are
praised as “hard workers” but if someone else is poor and powerless,
they are told it’s their fault because they didn’t work hard enough,
even if they are manifestly pulling double shifts and raising a family
alone.
The
logic of this might not hold for much longer. Eighteen months ago, when
riots raged in England, the kids in hoods smashing up the high street
listed bankers’ bonuses and MPs’ expenses among the reasons for their
disaffection, though it was said that these young people just really,
really wanted a new pair of trainers.
This
year, the desperation is deeper and there are no Olympics to distract
us. How long can the logic of inequality, the logic of “workers” and
“shirkers”, withstand public rage?
