Articles

28 May 2012

Cameron must quickly rediscover progressive conservatism

Gavin Kelly, Financial Times

The Conservatives’ dismal spring has served to remind us how a political project, however painstakingly put together, can easily come apart. It also appeared to mark the end of David Cameron’s modernising agenda.

Progressive conservatism – a hazily defined attempt to forge a centre-right politics that is socially liberal and green on the one hand and concerned with improving the plight of the disadvantaged without invoking the big state on the other – seems to have disappeared before it was ever fully formed.

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Minimum wage is least carers deserve

Gavin Kelly, The Guardian

A good thing about the national minimum wage, you might think, is that even if it's set at a pretty modest level you can at least be sure that everyone will receive it. Sure, there will be the odd rogue employer who needs to be tackled for non-compliance. But it's not like there will be a major sector where there are large numbers of workers being paid less than the minimum. Because that would be illegal. So it wouldn't happen.

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Bad Univeralism

Gavin Kelly, Prospect

Universal welfare benefits, available to all regardless of income, have long animated the politics of the welfare state. Prime Ministers from Atlee to Cameron have grappled with the universal principle, whereby certain benefits are given to all citizens, even the rich. Universalism goes against the notion that benefits should always target the poor. Defended by some, lambasted by others, the idea of benefits for all has divided opinion within and between parties.

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Osborne's budget: all in it together? Or are we ever more divided as cuts bite

Gavin Kelly, The Observer

There's been much talk of the cuts hitting women harder than men. Certainly the government hasn't been slow to hit support for families – which hits women harder. Support for childcare was targeted early on. This week's child benefit fix at least made a bad policy a bit better. But it remains the case that families with children are bearing the brunt of the pain.
The gender pay gap persists and has a major impact on living standards. However, over the past 20 years or so, far more of the growth in the household income of low- to middle-income families has come from women's employment than men's. Recently, that long-term rise in female participation has faltered. And if we compare the UK's record to the best performers in Europe, it suggests that a million women are missing from our jobs market. Closing that gap over the next 10 years represents a rare opportunity to spread prosperity.

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The prime minister needs to think long

Gavin Kelly, Financial Times

The ongoing NHS debacle reveals far more than Andrew Lansley’s lack of political acumen. It also tells us about the governing habits of the coalition and how they need to change.

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Tax credits: a flawed friend

Gavin Kelly, The Guardian

Following on from this week's bleak news on jobs – with unemployment up and confirmation that those new jobs on offer are all part time and insecure – another wave of stealth cuts is about to crash over Britain's working poor. After their tax credits were singled out for harsh treatment last spring then frozen in the autumn, a further £1bn will hit low- to middle-income families – many living on as little as £25k – in just six weeks' time.

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Will Britons cope with the fallout from a lost decade?

Gavin Kelly, The Observer

It's still amazing how little many people understand about how poor so many families are in our country, relative to what other people think. That's particularly a metropolitan misunderstanding. That's still the case today, but it is also noticeable that there is starting to be a detail and rigour in the conversation about living standards that we haven't seen before. I'm an optimist by nature, but it's hard not to be a pessimist now. Even when the economy was steadily growing, before the financial crisis, a large swath of the country was not sharing in that growing prosperity. These households have since seen a fall in their income, the like of which we have never known in any of our lifetimes. The media and others are playing catch-up with the longer-term reality: many working families were experiencing tough times before anyone talked about the "squeezed middle".

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Worried about losing a decade after the autumn statement? We might lose two

Gavin Kelly, The Guardian

Those fretting about whether we might face a "lost decade" need to steel themselves. It could be worse than that. Based on the downgraded Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) assumptions we can now project that the wages of an ordinary worker in 2016 will be at the same level as they were in 2001; and that only under rosy assumptions will wages surpass their pre-recession levels by 2020.

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