What's the lowest point that a civilised and affluent country should allow some one to descend to? What are the base things, the lowest standard of living that it is acceptable? Is there a lowest point at all?
In Victorian society there was no lowest point. If you were injured and couldn't work you went hungry. Other than relying on whatever charity you could find, you might starve. You could certainly be homeless or destitute. The received view of government at the time was that this wasn't something that the state should be responsible for. Charities would pick up the pieces at best, otherwise you could try street begging.
The question of the lowest acceptable point is one that is at the heart of the belief system of the Conservative and Labour parties.
If you are Conservative then despite any spun protestations to the contrary, there is no real lowest point that some one can descend to. I know because I worked for a housing association in the early 90s and saw directly the effects of Major's economic policies. Osbourne's announcement today will herald a welfare model where claimants will have benefits taken away from them for the slightest administrative glitch or reason. They will have to appeal against loss of benefit and this will not be a speedy process. Some one may be without money for weeks or not at all. As a result you may be homeless and picked up by a charity. You may not be "so lucky" and will have to live rough. If you are hungry you may steal, if only to get into some kind of system again. You will in short be lost to the welfare system and this will not trouble the Tories at all. That isn't infantile name calling, it's a fact, just look back fifteen or twenty years.
Over the next few years we will see homeless rates go up and a return to the volumes of street begging that was common place twenty years ago. Again there will be no troubled consciences within government nor I suspect from Conservative voters. Figures will be disputed or a finger will be pointed across the chamber at the profiligate and irresponsible "deficit deniers" who caused this in the first place. The poor and desperate will be invited the vent their spleen at Her Majesty's Opposition.
The previous Labour government had many faults but there is one core view at the heart of Labour belief which makes them miles apart from the Conservatives. It informed Brown and Darling's economic policies and response to the financial crisis.
It is an affront to the Labour Party, to the fibre and core of their collective being, that anyone should go under on their watch. For all Gordon Brown's infatuation with financiers, that some one should be derelict, homeless and hungry was an offence to his upbringing, thinking and conviction and he did everything he could to avert it.
As the Coalition continue with their fanatical assault on the welfare state crime and homelessness will rise, street begging will increase, whilst the Lib Cons take the credit for reducing the welfare bill and reducing unemployment figures.
The clock continues to be turned back, any legacy of a Labour government continues to be erased, and in this project the Conservatives have enthusiastic and willing collaborators in the Liberal Democrats.
