In recent years a number of academics have focused their attention on what in the US is called ‘flyover country’ but which in the smaller UK is probably best translated as ‘the places that time forgot’[1.  The Times columnist, Matthew Parris, was criticised for using ‘Hopeless’ as a synonym for Clacton-on-Sea, with its shell-suits and air of death, though to be fair to him, as a young MP Parris made a memorable documentary while vainly trying to live in Newcastle on £27 benefits per week. More.]. There is a faint sense of the visiting anthropologist about many of these endeavours, though the best – Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers In Their Own Land for example – do imaginatively convey the mixture of despair and resentment of struggling folk without turning them into secular saints.

What one misses is a first person voice describing the lived experience in all its precarious complexities, rather than an outsider sampling it for a short while. For that I would recommend Linda Tirado’s Hand To Mouth, which was published in 2014.

The subtitle of one of its editions, ‘The Truth Of Being Poor in a Wealthy World’ captures what is most original in Tirado’s work – since the book is also a moral mirror for those who don’t even have to think about the daily choices they make. The book appropriately concludes with an ‘open letter to rich people’ about sensitivity to the realities of being poor. Read it if you do not bother to talk to checkout women (it’s usually women) or waiters – or perhaps if you are more comfortable with robots and machines?

Tirado’s book had a very contemporary genesis. One night, after attending early morning college classes prior to working at her two low-paid jobs, Tirado (who has two small children) read a post on an online message board asking: “why do poor people do things which seem so self-destructive?” Her mini essay-length response went viral and she received 20,000 emails in a week. The essay was reproduced by the Huffington Post and Nation, and before long she was asked to turn it into this book.

Tirado simply sketched a working day which began at 6am and finished after midnight the following morning. Although by 2013 she and her husband Martin were relatively comfortable, Tirado had vivid memories of living in a motel on a diet of peanut butter and frozen burritos, because cooking food would attract cockroaches. Better to smoke cigarettes to suppress her appetite than to have to suppress crawling insects. Don’t eat in public either for fear of being unable to smile without embarrassment.  Tirado lost several teeth after a drunk driver smashed into her car, and when a dental plate was inserted, it soon broke. There are no photos of her from that period (2006) onwards, because of an obvious problem when any photographer said ‘Smile!’

“Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor”.

Most of what Tirado writes about dead-end temporary jobs is pretty familiar, notably the petty chicanery of corporate employers determined to squeeze the maximum profit from an exhausted workforce. She is also good on life without any financial cushion, particularly if a car breaks down or is towed away, and why very poor people resort to predatory lenders, about whom her views are ambivalent when compared with her detestation of banks.

Where her book breaks new ground is on the personality deformation this way of being induces, of becoming like an armoured ‘zombie’ which in a vicious circle, the Customer King quickly reads as ‘rudeness’. The endless possibilities of a consumer society mean nothing to someone who has fryer grease in the hair (‘bad hair’ everyday), who knows how to wash her single pair of jeans so they will fit when she is size 12 or 16, but who has nothing to say on social occasions because she has not been to the latest bars, movies or restaurants. All the time the rich are enjoining the poor as to how to behave too, without comprehending what that means. As she writes:

“Responsible poverty is an endless cycle of no. No, you can’t have that. You can’t do that, can’t afford that, can’t eat that, can’t choose that. This is off-limits, and that is not for you, and this over here is meant for different kinds of people. More than once I’ve spent money I couldn’t really afford simply to state that I could, if only to myself. Just to say it”.

Predictably enough, Tirado’s book became caught up in the ideological conflict between Left and Right over the role of government in alleviating poverty and the responsibilities of the individual towards society. The Left eagerly embraced her as an example of how people are structurally trapped in poverty, making forced choices about their lives that cannot warrant individual blame. The Right responded with charges of the Left’s susceptibility to ‘poverty porn’ and began to pick holes in Tirado’s ‘biographical’ account[2.  Here’s the Reason website trying to do so in December 2013.]. Some of this was so nasty and petty that it tells you more about the authors than Tirado herself.

Sceptics say that after a conventional upbringing, including a brief stint at the same prep school as the one attended by Mitt Romney, Tirado had left home at sixteen, drifting about in ways that are common to many young people trying to find a road in life. Her one bout of ‘real’ poverty (which she describes on pp. 59-60) came in her late twenties after her husband, a Marine who had served in Iraq, did not receive his veteran’s benefits payment and their basement apartment simultaneously flooded. Her critics say that Tirado’s sense of hopelessness was belied by her early morning college classes, not to mention the $62,000 she crowd-sourced to fund writing of her book. At one point acrimony over Tirado – by then a minor celebrity – reached the point that she had to whip out her dentures on camera to prove the state of her teeth.

Despite these claims that Tirado has perpetuated an elaborate ‘hoax’, Hand to Mouth ranks Number 7 on a list of the all-time best books about poverty, slightly below Dickens and Steinbeck. That must be grim news to those who want to inspect Tirado’s teeth. I am inclined to be generous about Tirado’s book too.

Like the best writers Tirado has a way of animating the apparently ordinary, often by turning it around so we notice something fresh. This more than compensates for a few self-indulgent passages in a book that is completely unsentimental. She explicitly incorporates the responses of the rich to the poor, in other words venturing beyond the well-trodden terrain of who pays for what in the dessicated musings of think-tank folk, even if this means sometimes ‘objectifying’ the well off. The book is admirably direct, cutting through the myriad subtle social evasions that allow these different tribes to coexist.

This review is the first in a new series...

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By Tim Montgomerie

Freud, by then in his early 80s, knew or had known everybody and could be gloriously waspish, though never without good reason. In fact, what comes across most is his deep reserve of empathy for especially complex, troubled personalities, and his generously worded insights into what made them so.

One line has stuck with me above the rest. Gayford asked him about George Orwell – Freud knew him, of course – and after a quick overview of the work (“1984 is unreadable, but Coming Up For Air is a bit good”), he delivered a judgement of masterly precision: “I would say that he carried decency to the point of real imagination”.

Any fan of Orwell must surely read that line, sigh, nod, and acknowledge, “yes, that’s it”. Orwell was fired by a belief in decency, his work marinaded in the stuff: the struggle of each man and woman to live in such a way, physically, psychologically, morally; aching laments for its regular absence; and excoriation of those who gave it no place.

Freud may have had little time for 1984, but Orwell’s great dystopian piece portrayed a world in which decency had died, in which the innate dignity of the individual was rejected. In carrying indecency to the point of real imagination, Orwell reveals to us the centrality to any humane society of its opposite.

If it’s a good theme for literature, its surely not a bad one for public life. If you can convincingly describe your credo as an MP or minister as ‘carrying decency to the point of real imagination’, you’re setting your feet on the right path. What do we mean by decency? Something deeper than its rigid Victorian definition of suitable and decorous behaviour – also the care we should have for one another, those for whom we are immediately responsible, but also those who comprise the different onion-like layers of the society we inhabit, locally, nationally and globally. Not for nothing does Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights state the following. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

If the dignity of the individual is where we begin, then, I would argue, the modern Right has some big questions to answer.

Let’s start with Britain, where we have a government that simply seems to have forgotten about people – or, at best, to have deprioritised them. It is cocooned in the Brexit negotiations, in an abstract language of billions and tariffs and borders and frictionless trade. It is a pinball machine of egos and personal ambitions, of calculated slights and open plots. It is, in many ways, not a functioning government at all.

Here, at a little length, is what Theresa May told us from the steps of No 10 on the day she became Prime Minister.

“We believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we’re from. That means fighting against the burning injustice that, if you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others. If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white. If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university. If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately.

‘If you’re a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s not enough help to hand. If you’re young, you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.

If you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise. You have a job but you don’t always have job security. You have your own home, but you worry about paying a mortgage. You can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school.

If you’re one of those families, if you’re just managing, I want to address you directly.

‘I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws, we’ll listen not to the mighty but to you. When it comes to taxes, we’ll prioritise not the wealthy, but you. When it comes to opportunity, we won’t entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.”

This speech was, not to put too fine a point on it, magnificent: a clarion call for decency. It seemed to herald something better, grittier and more real than the posh-boy chess match we’d grown used to. I was talking about this with a Labour MP last week and he admitted: “When I heard he say that I thought “she’s amazing. We’re f**ked.”’

Today, when you look around the country at the legions of homeless souls shivering in shop doorways, at the seemingly endless parade of desperate individuals crushed by the grinding cogs of the Universal Credit system; as you read stories about teachers handing out shoes and food to impoverished children; as you build into your weekly shopping bill a levy for the local food bank, something Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg apparently finds ‘rather uplifting’: that speech seems like a bad joke. In their ideological pursuit of breaking with the EU and their inner battles for control, the Tories have simply forgotten about the people who need decency from government most of all.

It’s ironic, in a way, that the Right is currently so obsessed with systems and statistics, its own equivalent of grand economic theory and tractor production figures. The consequences of this for its reputation and for the country are horrible. We seem to have a government that lacks any kind of heart, a hard, ruthless, unbending administration of shadows that is impossible to admire and that allows Labour’s grotesque neo-Marxist leadership to position itself as the caring, optimistic wing of British politics. The Tories have been cowardly on taxation, unambitious on social policy (as Tim says here, you can’t blame Brexit for the almost total inactivity on most other fronts), careless with the Union, and absent from the field where the poor and the sick are battling the toughest of environments. No wonder the devastating tragedy of Grenfell Tower felt like such a grotesque commentary on our times.

Sir John Major, a Tory lion to today’s mewling kitties, says his party needs to “show its heart again“. At their best the Conservatives have married heart and head in pursuit of transformative reforms, from the abolition of slavery to the introduction of same-sex marriage. Today, they seem part of a wider global movement that is interested only in its own self-preservation and ideological obsessions. One look at the US Republicans, propping up the worst and most shaming president in the country’s history as they shove tax cuts for the rich through Congress, shows where this mindset can end.

Sometimes the circumstances require you to govern in poetry, even just a bit, even when the weather is against you. If they carry on like this, the Tories will put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. They are allowing him and the hard, bad men who surround him to lay claim to the nation’s heart, to hoist the flag of virtue, to present themselves as tribunes for the vulnerable, to carry decency to the point of real imagination. It’s utter nonsense, of course, but when people are in need of a hug and all they are offered is a smack in the mouth, it should be no surprise when they look to the guy with open arms.

But, just for the moment, Brexit is doing what membership of the European Union also did and is complicating lines of accountability for politicians. Most recently the government’s social justice agenda (or lack thereof) has been blamed on the time, energy and brainpower that the divorce from Brussels is eating up.

Alan Milburn cited Brexit when, last week, he resigned from the government’s social mobility commission.

Nicky Morgan, the staunch Remainer who now chairs the Treasury Select Committee, never misses an opportunity to undermine Brexit and told ConservativeHome readers that social reform had been sidelined because the government’s best brains were fixated on getting a good deal from Brussels.

And an opinion poll for today’s Independent finds the public in agreement with this ‘blame Brexit’ argument. 60% say important domestic issues are being neglected as a result of Britain’s most important post-war negotiations.

Sorry folks but it’s too easy to blame Brexit for this government’s general inertia and, with respect to the urgent need to address the acute social problems facing advanced western nations, it’s wholly unacceptable. It’s not acceptable because the whole ‘blame Brexit’ argument rests on the false assumption that a lot of effort would be needed to move one nation policy ideas from the drawing board to the take-off stage. Many are already on the runway and could be quickly airborne if there was the will.

Here are five policies that could be implemented by any one of the 95% of ministers who aren’t involved in the Brexit process…

1. Cancellation of middle class tax cuts[1. See David Laws’ recent UnHerd column for why increases to income tax thresholds now largely benefit better-off, two-earner couples.] and diversion of the money saved to improve the incentive structures within Universal Credit or to ease the council tax burden that disproportionately hits poorer families.
2. A green light for – as Sajid Javid, the freelancing Communities Secretary, had proposed – greater capital borrowing while maintaining tight control of day-to-day (or current) spending. This could help finance the houses that the south needs and the infrastructure that the northern and rural economy lacks (if you’ll forgive the slight over-simplification).
3. Reform the 1961 Land Compensation Act (as Nick Boles recommends in his ‘Square Deal for Housing’ manifesto) so that the surge in land value when planning permission is granted is shared more fairly between the private landowner and the taxpayer. Many Tory MPs would not like this proposal (because of the way it retrospectively changes the terms under which some investors decided to use their money) but it would almost certainly be supported by enough opposition MPs to become law and would release billions for investment in affordable homes and the infrastructure that is needed to support them.
4. Implement the manifesto to strengthen families put together by Tory MP Fiona Bruce and Tory peer Lord Farmer. Its eighteen simple and cheap policies would start to address the government’s current lack of interest in supporting the institution that the Pope has correctly described as the best educator, hospital and welfare provider.
5. And, finally, how about rehiring the welfare advisers to David Cameron who were summarily dismissed when Theresa May became PM? They had been working on a ‘life chances’ agenda and were ready to launch policies to address the paths to poverty caused by addiction, debt and mental illness. Their work was unforgivably binned when nearly all advisers to the outgoing PM were axed in an unnecessarily bloody clear-out.

In each of these cases the reason for inactivity is not Brexit…

In the case of policy one, it’s inadequate recognition that the benefit freeze that Philip Hammond left in place was proposed at a time when the rate of inflation was much lower. The freeze is causing real misery for many Britons who have to count every penny.

In the case of two it’s Mrs May’s unwillingness to sack her excessively cautious Chancellor and his support for the Treasury short-termist approach to the public finances. The failure to borrow now in order to increase the housing stock will only lead to higher housing benefit bills in the future but Britain’s finance ministry is too rigid in instinctively opposing preventive interventions of this kind.

In the case of three it’s fear of giving Jeremy Corbyn any kind of victory but if Mrs May is serious about housing being her number one priority she has a choice: reach across the aisle and deliver this grand reform or continue to promise big but deliver small.

In the case of four it’s simple lack of interest – throughout the Tory party – in family policy. At this year’s Tory conference in Manchester, for example, there was just one fringe meeting on the family (hosted by the Centre for Social Justice). If that meeting hadn’t have been held there wouldn’t have been anything at all on this most vital of social institutions at the conference.

Any why isn’t policy set five happening? The explanation is a deliberate political shift to woo a certain kind of voter. Mrs May made it clear, on becoming PM, that her focus would be the ‘just about managing’ class and, very regrettably, she shelved what might have been a great and honourable Tory focus on the helping the people at the very bottom, who are aren’t managing at all, or are hardly managing.

***

Post-the-Brexit-referendum when so many people who don’t normally vote went to polling stations in the hope for change… Post-the-general-election when the commanding Tory lead in opinion polls evaporated as voters signaled they did not want ‘stable’ but change… Post-the-Grenfell-tragedy when it was impossible to remain ignorant of the inadequate housing standards that so many have to endure…. Post these things it was and is vital that the party of Wilberforce, Disraeli and Macmillan rose/rises to the occasion. While it hasn’t enacted anything quite so regressive as its centre-right sister party on the other side of the Atlantic seems set to, the British Conservative Party has not yet come close to fulfilling the aspirations Mrs May set out on her first day in the nation’s top job. Most ministers are not involved in Brexit. Many complain at the control freakery of the Number 10 operation that stops them pursuing policies they’d like to. That desire by Mrs May to run the Whitehall machine as tightly as she used to run the Home Office is at least as much of an explanation for paralysis in government than Brexit. There are plenty of policies that could build the hope that is so absent at the moment – especially in the hardest-pressed corners of the country. And let’s not pretend that Brexit is the main reason that they’re gathering dust on Whitehall’s shelves.