Will any party stand up for ‘Nick’?

Meet Nick. He is 30 years old, has a good job and lives in London. He keeps himself to himself. He isn’t political. At least he never used to be. And yet the struggle of Nick has become the struggle of our age. For Nick, the social contract has broken down.

Nick embodies a generation for whom achieving the same life quality as their parents is a distant dream

After he has paid his taxes, student loan and the rent for his Zone 4 shoebox, Nick’s take-home pay is meagre. He knows where his money goes: on the benefits, social housing and remittances of one Karim, 25, an aspiring grime artist; and on Simon and Linda, 70, a retired couple spending the fruits of their final-salary pensions and property portfolio on cruises. Nick doubts that he will ever own his own home or receive a state pension. His bills only seem to grow, but the Scuzz Nation outside his flat only gets shabbier. Head in hands, he despairs as his bike is stolen once again.

Nick is not a real person. He’s a popular internet meme. He embodies a generation crushed by the costs of mass immigration and an ageing population, for whom achieving the same quality of life as their parents seems an increasingly distant dream. It is through Nick’s eyes that we should view Labour and Reform UK’s recent welfare pronouncements.

With his austerity-phobic backbenchers spooked by the local elections, Keir Starmer wants to restore eligibility for the winter fuel allowance for most pensioners and remove the two-child benefit limit. On the hunt for disillusioned Labour voters, Nigel Farage has gone further, aiming to scrap the cap and restore the allowance in full, at an estimated annual cost of £5 billion. This on top of the £80 billion the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests his plan to raise the threshold for paying income tax to £20,000 could require.