Of all of this era’s grim political soundbites, is the worst “the squeezed middle”? This Miliband coinage takes a real problem (yes, middle-class incomes are rising less quickly than costs, privatised utilities are gouging their customers etc) and applies a subtle and divisive dogwhistle to it.
The problem isn’t just that the bottom, the poorest, get neglected every time the focus is on the “squeezed middle”, although that is true. A living wage is a great policy, for example, but it does nothing for you if you don’t get a wage. Similarly, the Lib Dems redistributed upwards with their increase in personal allowances, all the while waving the policy in the air as a supposedly progressive figleaf over the ugly assaults on the poor they have perpetrated with the Tories. A higher personal allowance would be a fine thing, as would a restoration of the 10p tax rate.. if there was any effort to make the poorest, those out of work, significantly better off (which doesn’t mean threatening to take their benefits away unless they find non-existent suitable work), and also to tax the rich a bit more.
No, the worse problem is hidden in the physics. If the middle is being squeezed, logically it’s being squeezed between what’s below it as well as what’s above. This metaphor implies that the poorest are part of the problem, part of the squeeze put on the middle. Presumably this is meant to provide a deniable echo for Labour’s long-standing distaste for those right at the bottom of society, the “scroungers” and the like.
The reality is that every time benefits are cut or things like the bedroom tax imposed, that’s a squeeze on the bottom, and it’s accompanied by bungs for the better-off: cheap housing to restart the bubble, boosts to personal allowances, and on top of it all, fiddles like non-dom status for the top. The middle may be under pressure, but it’s all from the top. And the bottom bears the weight of both.
#1 by Sean Fleming (@flemingsean) on November 18, 2013 - 3:09 pm
I see where you’re coming from with this, James. And you’ve constructed a very valid argument. But your interpretation of “squeezed middle” and mine aren’t the same.
I don’t see this as a one-out, one-in kind of affair – like some overly full nightclub of disaffection and grievance, where acknowledging one group’s problems can only be done by ignoring another’s.
Far from it, I see “the squeezed middle” as an attempt to reassure those who are neither the least well off nor the most wealthy, that the issues they face are important too. Too… as well, in addition. Not instead.
My own personal pet-hate among the current crop of political bon mots is “hard working families.”
Every time I hear it, in my head I hear “quiet bat people.”
#2 by James on November 18, 2013 - 3:14 pm
Yeah, as someone who’s chosen not to have kids I certainly feel left out of the last one. And I’d agree if and only if politicians who talked about the financial difficulties (which, depending on how you define it, are certainly real) of those in the middle were apparently concerned for a second with the difficulties of the poorest. And they don’t appear to be.
#3 by Indy on November 18, 2013 - 3:24 pm
The squeezed middle issue is huge and hugely problematic. It’s what lies behind the whole ‘something for nothing’ rhetoric from the Tories and the insane echoing of that by Lamont & co.
Basically, as I see it, when people who are earning and paying tax are doing OK they are quite happy to pay tax as long as government doesn’t waste it in too outrageous a way and they get something back for what they pay out. But when things get tough, as they are now, people start questioning where their tax is going.
This explains the quite wicked conspiracy between the media and the UK Govt on welfare for example, or on the NHS. We are seeing that second hand to some extent here, as most Scottish politicians have had the sense not to go down that road.
But you can see how easily the trick can be pulled and it works. Public support for welfare cuts shows that it works.
The answer to that is not to say bastards, let’s squeeze the middle more.
Recognise that people on the bottom – as things stand – need the people in the middle to be willing to go on paying taxes and doing the right thing (it’s not the squeezed middle that dodges tax after all – that’s the prerogative of the rich). So regarding them as bad selfish people is not sensible.
The answer to the Tory tactic is to explain that welfare reform is not about making slackers do an honest days work, it’s mainly about cutting support to disabled people and carers. If Labour politicians just explained that calmly every time the subject came up it would change the narrative and let people know what the truth is. Instead Labour people just seem to tie themselves in knots and contradict each other at every turn.
Final thought – long term we don’t want to have a ‘bottom’ at all. We want an expanded middle don’t we? That is certainly a big part of the reason I am voting Yes.
#4 by Douglas McLellan on November 19, 2013 - 12:15 am
One of the reasons that I think that the squeezed middle is an idea that resonates for many is also a demographic one – albeit one that is perhaps more felt than articulated. For example, my parents only had two kids because that is all that they could afford. I suspect they may have wanted more but felt that they could not, themselves, look after more children financially. Yet people in the ‘squeezed middle’ perceive that there are those that have children and want the state to help pay for them.
Again, as a feeling, it can go further. Neither I or my wife want kids yet and we are in our 30s and so many of my contemporaries in from school who are in the ‘squeezed middle’ are likewise childless or have waited until their 30s before having kids. Those in the what, if we use this metaphor, we would call the group below have, as a school cohort, had many more kids and at an earlier age. At least one I know is a grandmother (she had a child at 15 and then hers did at 16).
I dont know if the stats back up these feelings or not but I suspect that the squeezed middle soundbites resonates not just economically but also at a much more personal level where fairness is hard to define but certainly felt.
#5 by James on November 19, 2013 - 7:42 am
I hadn’t seen it as being about kids at all. But then I’m not into having kids, so perhaps that’s why. And there’s a whole stack of class issues there…
#6 by Douglas McLellan on November 19, 2013 - 10:28 am
Of course there are a whole load of class issues there. The entire premise of the squeezed middle idea is to highlight class differences. The entire idea of our political system is to create differences between groups of voters and try then to gather enough groups to vote in a majority.
The problem is that whilst you are right that the financial pressure on the middle comes from the top, the cultural pressure, the cultural squeeze as it were (so easily played on by the right-wing press) comes from below. Of course, neither squeeze is a palatable idea but all political parties try to position themselves somewhere in the nominal three groups.
#7 by Allan (@greenrhino3) on November 19, 2013 - 8:28 pm
“The squeezed middle” is classic New Labour, it means a lot of things all not necessarily true. It pitches both to adjacent to poor, who work for low wages and to those on £40,000 – £50,000 who have the stepford lifestyle but are not comfortable enough not to notice prices for essentials & for utilities going up. That last group in particular are more key for Milliband’s chances come 2015, but Milliband will be keen to be seen to be keeping the first group onboard.
Oh, and I agree with Sean. Deeply patronising towards hard working individuals with no families (for whatever reason).