‘We’ can’t know how the very poorest live

I’ve been conducting a straw poll. Using incidental encounters with people who don’t follow politics closely, I’m learning what ordinary voters do or don’t know or think of Rishi Sunak. Responses range between neutral and mildly positive. Beyond that, what do I get from respondents? (1) They really don’t know much about him; but (2) they do know he’s rich.

The problem for Mr Sunak is not so much that he’s known to be rich – of course he is – but that this is almost the only thing about him that has sunk in. Here in Britain the observation that a politician is rich is typically followed by the thought that this may ‘separate’ them from the lives and concerns of the ordinary voter. ‘If you haven’t lived it,’ we say, ‘how can you fully understand it?’

Well, let me relate two stories drawn from my own experience. In 1985, as a Tory MP, I tried living for a week on a single man’s benefits in Scotswood, Newcastle, a neighbourhood absolutely devastated by unemployment. For the cameras I mouthed the usual stuff about knowing now how it felt; but the truth (to which my producers would not have been hospitable) was that I hadn’t experienced ‘what it was like’ at all. I had hope. I always knew it would end and I would be returning to the comforts of an adequately remunerated career. Those I lived among in Scotswood didn’t. So it was by definition impossible for someone in my position to feel with as opposed to feeling for. Sympathy, yes; compassion, yes; ‘empathy’, no.

I draw from this the conclusion that neither politicians nor journalists nor most Spectator readers can ever really ‘put themselves in the place’ of the poor or desperate, though we may learn about their circumstances.