It’s the great game obsessing all Westminster: who exactly constitutes a ‘working person’? During the election, Labour regularly said that the tax burden on ‘working people’ was too high. In the manifesto, the party again pledged to protect ‘working people’ from paying more. Now, ahead of a tax-raising Budget, various groups are discovering that while they might think they get up every day and do something resembling hard work, they are, in fact, not actually a working person after all.
On Monday morning, Starmer referenced the term 26 times in a speech before telling journalists: ‘The working people of this country know exactly who they are.’ Sounds like self-ID isn’t dead yet eh? In case some readers don’t know ‘exactly who they are’, Mr S has produced a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to who isn’t a working person according to Labour ministers…
WFH employees
In this multimedia age, millions of Brits can now enjoy the flexibility of performing their labours remotely via Zoom. But do these many employees really count as ‘working people’? Treasury minister James Murray told the BBC last week that ‘Working people are people who go out to work for their income’ – suggesting that those who work from home are, er, somehow not working people.
A slip of the tongue perhaps? Yet Murray’s boss Rachel Reeves said the same line back in June, insisting repeatedly to Sky News that ‘Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes. Sort of by definition, really, working people are those people who go out and work.’ Bad luck for those who don’t perform the rat run each day then…
Landlords
If you’re one of the UK’s 2.82 million private landlords, you might have thought you are working hard. Bed bugs, rat infestations, noisy tenants and aging properties – it all sounds rather exhausting. Well, according to Labour, you are not actually part of the group deemed ‘working people’.
Asked five times if he would count landlords in this aforementioned class, Treasury minister James Murray last week told Nick Robinson: ‘I’m not going to get into too many hypotheticals here’. Keir Starmer meanwhile told Sky that landlords ‘wouldn’t come within my definition’ and refused to rule out a tax rise for them in the Budget. Bet they’re glad they did up their properties now eh?
Savers
Managed to save some money for a rainy day? Bad news – you may no longer qualify as a working person. Over the summer, Starmer started re-defining working people as those who ‘earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble’. So much for encouraging personal responsibility…
Non-taxpayers
Earning part-time? Sorry, you’re a leech on the state. Back in June Sir Keir told LBC in June ‘I come within my own definition of a working person, which is earning my living, paying my taxes and knowing what it means to save money.’ Given that income tax is paid on the first £12,570 earned during the tax year, do part-time workers who make less than this no longer count as ‘proper working people’?
Small business owners
Have you managed to strike out on your own and set up a local business? Do you employ a handful of people? Do you work late and on weekends to make sure the sums add up? Has it been a bit of a struggle since the pandemic? Well, that’s great and all – well done – but sorry you may not actually be a working person. Rachel Reeves has said her Budget will help those receiving pay slips – not those dishing them out.
The middle classes
What about those who are just about managing? Nope, they’re not working people either! Labour minister Chris Bryant wheeled out how his own definition last week, telling Politics Live that the term ‘has become a shorthand in political circles for the people who were particularly disadvantaged in the cost of living crisis’ including ‘people [who] had to find an extra £300 a month for their mortgages… those are the people that we didn’t want to hit.’
Presumably, that means that the many middle-class Brits who can pay their mortgages are no longer ‘working people.’
High income individuals
Done well for yourself in life? Well, Labour doesn’t care much about you. That was the message from Wes Streeting this morning when he asked Kay Burley ‘When we’re making decisions, especially in the context of a Budget, who do we have in our mind’s eye?’ before replying ‘I don’t think the Chancellor’s worried about whether you or I are going to get by. She is worried about people on low and middle incomes.’
The Health Secretary – who earns £160,000 a year as a cabinet minister – claimed in the same interview that he was, in fact, a ‘working person’ because he is ‘working very hard.’ Rightio. It comes after his colleague Stephen Kinnock, who also takes home a six-figure salary, earlier refused to say whether those on £100,000-a-year incomes count as ‘working people’ or not. So, er, some people who are on high incomes do count as ‘working people’ – but only if Streeting et al deem them so. Tax hikes for thee, but not for me, eh?
Successful stock market investors
Making a bit of money on the stock market? You capitalist swine, how dare you speculate successfully. According to Starmer, those whose income derives from assets, such as shares or property, ‘wouldn’t come within my definition’ of a working person. Hours after the Commonwealth summit, Downing Street was forced to change this line, insisting that people who hold a small amount of savings in stocks and shares still count as working people.
Starmer’s spinners insist that he was referring to someone who primarily gets their income from assets in his Sky interview. To be a ‘working person’ then, it follows that you can own shares – just don’t be too successful and derive more than 50 per cent of your income from it. You got that?
Employees who do the bare minimum
Are you in a job where you are enjoy simply coasting by? Perhaps you are doing less onerous duties after burnout in a previous capacity? Sorry, according to the Chancellor, you are not actually a ‘working person’ – despite your monthly payslip saying otherwise. She suggested in this week’s Sun on Sunday that working people are ‘strivers who graft’. Bad news then for those who carry out their duties with anything less than Stakhanovite fervour…
Tory voters
Of course, any article on working people, would not be complete without the musings of the minister responsible for the ‘future of work.’ At his final DPMQs last week, Oliver Dowden began by asking Angela Rayner what constituted a ‘working person’. Her response? ‘The definition of “working people” is the people who the Tory party have failed for the past 14 years’. So, er, only people who did not vote Conservative at the last election can be ‘working people’ then? That would explain the Chancellor’s tax decisions…
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