I’ve never known a government to renege on election promises as quickly as this one

Some advice to give to the Labour government might be: “You’re heading in the wrong direction.” Towards austerity, shrinking services and once again – the Tories did it during the last financial crisis – making the poorest pay. 

Stop and think there; pause for a moment. Of course the poorest would be hit, and it is government’s lot to support people in poverty. Bringing relief to the poorest in society has been a major government responsibility since the creation of the welfare state in 1948. The government has always been the biggest cash supplier and rent payer since those foundational days. Charities may provide shoes, clothes, comforts and even shelter but the rent is coughed up by state support.  

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When government plans its budgets and allocations of money it will trim the most from the poorest. Hence any government that feels it’s riding a period where income is not keeping up with outgoings will often obliterate what little stability people in poverty might have. Remember, the government has to keep the health service afloat, with 50% of its resources going to keeping the poorest among us as healthy as possible. Remember, it has to keep the prisons and the whole of the justice system going, to corral (largely) the children of the poor into isolation from further wrongdoing. Remember, it has to keep our schools financed and pick up the enormous bill of the disruptive effects of poverty in the classroom. 

Please also realise that every wrong in society, from knife crimes to allowing rapacious ticket bureaux to charge the earth for pop concerts, is laid at the government’s door. 

This government has – quicker than any government I can remember – moved from Elysian promises to dread messaging about how tough it’s going to get. But bear in mind that message is only directed at the poorest, and indirectly at their supporters and friends who will not feel the whip of austerity. 

The government has less to spend on the poorest generally and directly, because it is spending indirectly on poverty through schools, health insurance and justice – to name but three. And every time I visit a hospital, I am reminded how class divided medicine is. The doctors of one class and the patients of another class. 

Most governments, at some stage in their eternal crisis of matching income with expenditure, settle for allowing a crap system to continue, largely because they do not have the resources to provide a better service. Because they don’t have the intellectual time or skills to reinvent the system. A window-dressing effect therefore sets in to government policy and delivery. Seemingly muscular intervention in the continuing crisis of society – riots, ticket hikes, river pollution, etc – then becomes the order of the day. Meanwhile government keeps feeding the beast of poverty with its insatiable need, taking up 40% of its income. 

The new administration can’t be entirely blamed for ‘playing government’ because it’s the only one on offer. You take over government and you pretend you know what you’re doing. Steered by a not always wise civil service, you then assume the role assigned to you. And soon enough you’re a government governing. But as I have said above, I cannot remember a government that so quickly reneged on the promise it gave while bidding for power, of not going headlong into austerity. Yet here we are in Grimsville; and we are only in the foothills of a Labour government. The Everest has yet to come. 

But back to the idea that government is so stretched with spending indirectly on poverty that it cannot give the poor more: which is the demand of the moment. They can’t get rid of the cap on supporting only the first two children; they can’t afford the winter fuel allowance, etc. In short, the government cannot do anything about dismantling poverty, but can only keep the present poverty support programmes left by the Tories. Of course, in the spirit of window-dressing they will do what the Tories did, which is have initiatives that will make it look as if things are being done. 

So we are looking at a government that will only ‘caretake’. That will only keep to the programme created by the last government; meaning in some ways that you say goodbye to one Tory government only to say hello to another. What is tragic about the situation is that fighting poverty and ridding us of much of it doesn’t get a look in. So we continue the charade that poverty is being diminished, when in fact it is an increasing reality. By sticking to the Tory shit show it can only increase poverty. For you either reinvent government, even in the middle of a crisis, or poverty will grow. We need less of ‘more of the same’ and more of the poverty busting. 

• Poverty prevention is our best hope. Here’s some tangible ways to keep people warm, dry and fed
• When it comes to poverty prevention it’s minds we must change – before anything else

I’ve been calling for a reallocation of our poverty programmes into a new Ministry of Poverty Prevention and Cure just at the time when government chooses to continue in the direction of the gaggle of Tories who ran the country for the last 14 years. 

It would be great to get away from eight separate ministries trying to wrestle the poverty behemoth to the ground. But it seems the government is intent on continuing the scattergun poverty programmes of the former incumbents. 

But the fight continues. MOPPAC – the Ministry of Poverty Prevention and Cure – gains ground as we speak.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

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