one down, 108 to go
If there’s one thing we all learned from the last election it’s that if you claim you’re for everybody you end up being for nobody. All parties attempted to rally the nation, and especially middle England, with appeals for unity in the face of adversity but none succeeded enough to win a majority. To do that you obviously have to divide and conquer. Set your stall out for a group, a large enough group, woo them and you’ve a chance.
Apparently the group everybody wants is the C1s. The C1s are lower-middle class, earning £20-40,000 and it’s these which kindly Thatcher and Major their victories, who defected to Blair and whom Cameron is now desperate to win back, lock, stock & barrel. The C1s despair at the failure of the police force so Cameron comes up with a proposal for police chiefs to be directly elected. The C1s have little faith in local schools so Gove introduces plans for state-funded independent schools. The C1s detest benefit scroungers so Duncan-Smith delivers a plan for massive welfare reform. It’s obvious that if Cameron can make the C1s his again then he’ll win by a comfortable majority margin next time and have no need for the liberal support.
But where does the withdrawal of child benefit fit into this courtship? Specifically, the move, which comes into effect in 2013, will affect households where one parent earns more than £44,000 but won’t hit dual-income families with a total income of £80,000. Phew, the C1s are unaffected and thankfully Cameron has now apologised for failing to mention the cut in his manifesto. That’s alright then but the anomaly continues to mock the original purpose of the welfare state. In reality, the potential saving of £1bn represents a drop in the ocean of the country’s £109bn structural deficit and I suspect we’ll all have more things to worry about than middle-class pocket money come the 20th November when the coalition unveils its spending review.
