David Cameron returned from the European Summit last week announcing that he had vetoed a new treaty in the ‘national interest’. It would be more accurate to say he was ‘held to ransom’ by the Conservative Party’s friends in the City.

Cameron’s Conservatives are a new breed of Tory. It would be wrong to say that, like the resurgent Wispa bars, they are the same 80’s product in a shiny new wrapper. Nearly 150 Tory MPs are ‘newbies’ who took their seats in 2010. Fewer of them attended private school then in years past- 54% today compared with 70% in 1983. The party is a different shade of blue from Thatcher’s time.

One thing that has not changed is the party’s vested interest in protecting the perceived generators of national wealth. The Smith Institute reports that 27% of the current Conservative crop have a history in financial services. According to Aditya Chakrabortty of The Guardian, the financial sector in this country employs about 1 million people. This means that an industry that employs less than one-thirtieth of the working population is represented by one-quarter of MPs in the dominant governing party.

The Conservatives and the financial sector are entwined in other ways too. A report by GMB reveals that nearly 60% of donations to the Tory party come from individuals and companies linked to finance, hedge funds and other City interests. The Square Mile has often been touted as the beating heart of London. In many ways, it’s the beating heart of the Conservative party too.

In light of such figures, it should come as no surprise that a Conservative Prime Minister should fight tooth and nail in the most prestigious of arenas to protect City interests. Cameron’s so-called ‘veto’ was not a free decision made by a plucky little Englander taking on would-be tyrants overseas, it was the ransom he was forced to pay in return for the continued sponsorship of the financial wizards of the City. On Newsnight, the Minister for Europe effectively conceded this point when he argued that: “There was a real risk that without the safeguards [Cameron] wanted…you would over time have a read across from the closer fiscal integration that the Eurozone countries want to do towards measures that would influence financial services in particular.” The ‘national interest’ was revealed by the bumbling Minister to be code for ‘financial services’.

Is it right that the diplomatic strategy of the British government should be dictated by a closeted club of multi-millionaires detached from the everyday experiences of the vast majority of Britons? Once again the formidable array of interests that profit or benefit from the mysterious operations of finance capital have shifted into gear in spirited defence of the sector. Financial services provide billions in corporation tax. Financial services are one of very few sectors that Britain can boast of being a world leader in. Financial services have a noble heritage reaching back to the dawn of empire, and deserve their vaunted position at the apex of our commercial society.

These are all true statements. What is interesting is that very similar things were said of the coalmining industry in this country thirty years ago, of shipbuilding, and of manufacturing. Other things were true of these industries. They were inefficient, could no longer compete with other nations, and required huge public subsidies just to keep going.

Curiously, the same could be said of the financial sector today. It is no longer efficiently allocating credit to those businesses that need it. It is losing ground to American and European competitors, a process that will only speed up as Britain is left out in the cold while closer fiscal consolidation of the Eurozone takes place. It has required £289 billion of direct financing by the taxpayer since 2008 just to stay afloat, far more that the £193 billion it pumped into the treasury in corporation tax between 2002-2008.

This is the final damning reason why Cameron’s Conservatives are a kind apart from Thatcher’s. Her government identified failing industries, stripped them of their workforce and let them loose to explore the seemingly endless opportunities promised by the ‘knowledge economy.’ Cameron’s government is being held hostage by a failing industry that continues to suck up the resources of the British state and dictate policy terms to a country that no longer sees it as a source of any worth.

Louie Woodall is a member of the Young Fabians and Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

This is surely correct. As IPPR Director, Nick Pearce, outlines in the essay in our Autumn edition of Anticipations, “unless you believe that the riots were simply random acts of criminal violence, then some attempt must be made to explain why they happened and what can be done to prevent them happening again.” Of course we need a robust response and should not shy away from punishing those who have broken the law. However, it is also important, as Pearce points out, not to ignore the fact that most of the areas affected had high rates of youth unemployment and low levels of educational attainment.

This is not an excuse for violence and it would be wrong to argue that the disorder occurred as a direct result of policies such as the scrapping of EMA. Many of the rioters were not young at all; many more already had criminal convictions. However, it must also be true that only people with no aspirations for, or connection to, their communities are willing to set them alight.

There are important lessons for Labour here.  While New Labour’s focus on modernisation was vital for reforming our public services, the party had too little to say about community itself. This is now starting to be rectified and it is crucial that Labour continues to avoid pandering, as the government has, to those who talk of ‘moral decline’. The party must focus instead on practical ways to strengthen civil society from the bottom up.

London Citizens community organiser, Emmanuel Gotoro, outlines a powerful example of how this can be achieved. The CitySafe Havens initiative, established following the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen in 2008, successfully brings together young people, police and shopkeepers to tackle local violence and anti-social behaviour. It centres upon the reporting of 100% of incidents and on the idea that strong relationships are the bedrock of community. The CitySafe campaign serves as a pertinent reminder that, far from being feral, many of our most active and civic-minded citizens are young people.

That’s not to say that we should ignore the vital role that the police have to play in all this. Safety and security must always be the overriding priority for any government and Yvette Cooper is right to highlight in this edition’s interview that effective policing is crucial to maintaining this. Cooper offers a devastating critique of the coalition’s approach to law and order, pointing to the evident contradiction between spending well over £100 million on Police and Crime Commissions while at the same time cutting the policing budget by 20%. Strong communities need properly resourced police. Just ask the young people campaigning with London Citizens.

We do not have a feral youth. Most young people are hard working, socially-conscious and responsible individuals – just like the rest of society. The lesson of the riots is not that our young are out of control, but rather that in some parts of the country, in areas of low aspiration, society has grown weak. In our effort to reweave the fabric of these communities we could do worse than look again at the opportunities available to our young people.

Now is the time for a fundamental rethink of youth policy.

James Green is Anticipations Editor and a Fabian Society Executive member

• You can read our online taster edition of the Autumn 2011 edition of Anticipations here. The full edition of Anticipations is only available to Young Fabian members. Joining couldn’t be easier and six months membership costs just £5. Click here for more information on joining the Young Fabians

This week, Young Fabian Women launches its first pamphlet, Women’s Issues - a selection of essays covering a wide range of policy issues, from the impact of the economic downturn on young people to Labour Party reform, youth violence to European cooperation.

Young Fabian Women provides opportunities for young women on the British left to get involved in politics and policy. We hope this pamphlet, no doubt the first of many, will encourage others to make their voices heard. As Oona King points out in her foreword, a century after the Suffragettes, the fight for equal representation and equal rights is far from won. As young, progressive women we have a responsibility to keep fighting to break through the glass ceilings that still characterise every area of public life.

A key vehicle for achieving greater equality, whether in the political or social realm, is the Labour Party and the wider progressive movement. And now is the ideal time to prove that Labour is the party of gender equality. As Sunday’s papers made clear, the Coalition Government is losing its electoral appeal to British women.

The problem is twofold: first, the Prime Minister’s attitude appears patronising, out of touch, and at times sexist, and second, his programme of swinging cuts – the defining feature of the Coalition to date – disproportionately affects women. No surprise then that a new study shows female approval for the coalition has plummeted to just 25%, with only 13% of women believing the Conservatives are the party “closest to women”.

Labour should take the initiative and make real equality for women, in terms of representation in the Commons, seats in the boardroom, fair access to pensions and support for carers, at the heart of its opposition to the Coalition. And we must play our part, by engaging in policy debates and standing for election.

After all, every issue is a woman’s issue.

Debbie Moss is a member of the Young Fabians and a contributor to Women’s Issues, a pamphlet by Young Fabian Women.

• Women’s Issues can be downloaded here. To find out more about Young Fabian Women click here or contact Claire Leigh on cleigh@youngfabians.org.uk.

Watching Labour from outside Liverpool, through the prism of media, blog and twitter coverage – to be fair – there was a lot to be happy about.

Keynote speeches received a lot of airtime and the key message punched through, particularly Balls on fiscal discipline (which coincided nicely with the Fabian publication “The Credibility Deficit”), Cooper on police bravery and reform, and Ed Miliband on ‘I’m my own man’.

The fight against the (perception at least) of a lurch to the left is going well. Ed M is speaking more passionately and more confidently. I believe he’s having speech training. That was a good idea, which is paying off. Ken also made some noise, that punched through to national media, on transport fares. And he dovetailed nicely with a simultaneous SMS campaign.

Ed’s main message, around ethics in markets and not-business as usual, needs a bit more work to stick in the minds of the man on the Clapham omnibus. But I think it could resonate well. I’d caution though, that just “being against business as usual” only works when you explain quite a bit of context.

On the down side, there were a lot of blogs and tweets pointing to the party being in lemming mode. There is a body of opinion that is frustrated by a sense that we know we have an unelectable leader and we are not landing the blows against the coalition, but that we are happy to stick our heads in the sand and keep congratulating ourselves. From outside of Liverpool, I picked up quite a bit of this sentiment.

But what do I mean by déjà vu?

It was the summer and autumn of 2008 when the credit crunch turbulence escalated into a full-blown financial and economic crisis. It came to a head around the time of the Party Conference season. In 2011, the Labour leadership speeches were ok. There were no big fails. But the Labour conference seemed slightly blind to the fact that the global economy is standing on a knife edge, in a similar position to where we were in the Autumn of 2008. Failure to reach a solution to the eurocrisis will affect all our lives in a very bad way for a long time to come. It will be a source of economic malaise and deprivation and, who knows, potentially a source of conflict.

In 2008, Cameron – in opposition – grasped the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and ripped up all the main speeches (and conference agenda) and refocused on what was happening in the economy. That showed a bit of vision.

Unfortunately, Labour didn’t do the same in 2011. Perhaps our heads are a little too far in the sand.

Nick Maxwell is Partnerships Officer for the Young Fabians.

The connection between rioting and economic deprivation must be recognised by a government and public venting its fury in all the wrong directions.

The chaos and wanton destruction of the past week has provoked a new bout of soul-searching within Britain. In the race to identify the origins of the rot that spread out to consume an alarming number of our communities, politicians, broadcasters, journalists, and British citizens have scrutinised the social fabric of the nation and unearthed a rich variety of possible answers. The public can already choose from a range of conceptual lenses through which they can interpret the acts of rioting, looting and murder that have so shaken the national psyche. It is tempting for the politically conscious to grasp at the interpretation that best accords with their stance on the political spectrum to the exclusion of all others, and understand the rioting through the distortions of their personal ideological prisms.

There are many who have already taken this course of action, and are lashing out in screen and print with their own half-formed ideas on the cause of the rioting. The Daily Mail published Melanie Philips’ decidedly right-wing analysis of the riots, attributing “the violent anarchy” of the last several days to “the three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.” On the other end of the spectrum, Nina Power has projected the London riots as the inevitable manifestation of an unequal society where “the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country”.

In a previous post, Alex evaluated the riots as an economic equation balancing costs and benefits. Labour and their supporters have spouted dozens of statistics in a bid to prove a link exists between economic instability with social disorder. Such analysis may appear cold, sterile and unappealing to the passions of many who want to brand those responsible as “scum”, “feral”, and “evil” in order to vent their understandable frustration. But it has to be recognized, it must be understood that there is a real, tangible link between economic permutations and social unrest.

It also has to be made brilliantly clear that there is a link between personal economic success and psychological resilience. I have discussed the correlation between unemployment and mental health in a previous article, but still many will state that an individual’s employment status is detached from their internal moral compass. The real link must be made more explicit.

Why does a certain individual see a discarded brick, pick it and throw it through a window, while another walks on by? Why does one teenager loot while another, who has the same ability to take what he wants and the knowledge that no-one will stop him, attempt to prevent him?

The answer lies in the individual’s psychological make-up, and the temperament of the invisible policeman of his conscience. However it can never, never be said that the mental state of any individual is constructed in a vacuum. The argument that the environment an individual grows in shapes his character is termed ‘behaviourism’, and is studied as a branch of moral philosophy. It has featured many times as part of discussions on incidences of supposed moral disintegration, perhaps most recently in Britain with the 1993 murder of Jamie Bulger, when Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair said: “We hear of crimes so horrific they provoke anger and disbelief in equal proportions… These are the ugly manifestations of a society that is becoming unworthy of that name.”

Would those words being any less aptly used today?

Were the riots a product of moral disintegration in some sections of our community? Yes – and the right is quick to acknowledge this. What it fails to do, and what the left must impress upon the public, is that this moral disintegration occurred in community environments that bred contempt, hate, and anger, and that these environments have been allowed to flourish because of institutional failures that neither Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron have successfully addressed.

The depressed communities of Tottenham, Hackney, Birmingham, Salford and elsewhere have been failed by both left and right. They have been cut-off and isolated from the rest of society just as the rich and powerful have cloistered themselves away in opulent London enclaves.

The Prime Minister has been careful with his choice of language over the last couple of weeks, but I applaud him for acknowledging that this is still “our” society, thereby implicating all peoples and classes in the shame that has engulfed our country. As he stated in the Commons, “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick”.

When one part of the body falls ill, the rest will soon follow unless immediate action is taken. That action cannot be isolated to condemnation, imprisonment, punishment and further deprivation. To do so would be to poison these environments further, and conjure up an even greater storm a decade down the line.

Instead, the link between deprivation and disruption needs to be made more explicit than ever, and severed once and for all.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabian Blog.

In his statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister floated the idea of giving the relevant authorities the power to suspend communication networks to prevent repeats of the violent disorder that erupted earlier this week across England. The role of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry’s instant messenger service will now be scrutinised by politicians to better understand their role in the riots, and to determine whether the authorities need powers to prevent such communication in future.

“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.

Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

I wrote a couple of days ago about the costs and benefits of rioting, noting that modern communication techniques have reduced the perceived costs to rioters of their actions. It is understandable that the government is looking at any and every method possible of preventing the riots from occurring again, if only to look vaguely like it is in control of events.

But placing constraints on freedom of expression, a right enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act, is the wrong tonic.

Yes, the events of the last few days have proved that communication networks can be used for ill.

But those events have also proven that the very same communication networks can be used for good – the Riot Clean Up movement is a good example. Social media has also been an important tool in the police’s ability to predict where trouble is likely to occur and to manage resources effectively.

But more importantly than that, the events of the last few days have not proven that politicians or the police will be able to discern appropriately between communication that supports acts of illegality and communication that supports legitimate acts of protest, or defiance. The powers the PM proposes could be used by the police and politicians to prevent a march against government policy, for example, should they decide that there is a reasonable prospect of “disorder” (howsoever defined).

That is troubling.

This week’s riots were extreme. But introducing powers to curb the ability of the people to communicate with one another would be extreme in response.

More than that, those powers would fail to address any of the root causes of the aggression and wanton criminality we witnessed in the last few days.

Blackberry’s instant messaging service facilitated the riots. It didn’t cause them.

Should David Cameron succeed in introducing such powers, he would quickly move from democrat to despot, arming himself with weaponry more commonly deployed in dictatorships.

That would be a devastating epilogue to a difficult week for Britain.

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” – Noam Chomsky.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabian Blog

In this guest post, Dr. Nicholas Allen examines the influence of the Murdoch press on British prime ministers since 1997.

Rupert Murdoch’s appearance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee on 17 July was a riveting affair. It was, he said, ‘the most humble day of my life’. It was also a day when the public learned that Murdoch had often entered Number 10 through the back door when visiting—because he had been asked to by its occupants. The question that prompted that admission was indicative of the concern felt by many about Murdoch’s relationships with successive prime ministers. His access to Messrs Blair, Brown and Cameron and their attempts to curry his newspapers’ favour have been portrayed in some quarters as evidence of excessive influence. Confirmation of his back-door comings and goings only added to the sense of his behind-the-scenes power in British public life.

The reality is probably somewhat different. No-one can deny the importance of news management to the prime ministership. As head of government, the prime minister is ultimately responsible for selling the record of his or her government to the voters and ensuring a supportive press. Blair must have been thoroughly grateful for the Sun and The Times’ support for the invasion of Iraq, for instance. Yet, at the same time, prime ministers need to be mindful of what all newspapers are saying- especially in the run-up to an election. Press coverage in the round also matters to prime ministers on a more personal level. The tenor of press coverage will affect his or her prestige and standing in the eyes of senior colleagues.

It almost goes without saying that the importance of press coverage in general undermines the importance of one man’s newspapers. The Murdoch press operates in a competitive market, and their influence on public opinion is limited. Prime ministers and their advisers almost certainly know this. Of course, some newspapers matter more than others. Murdoch’s newspapers are especially important in British politics because of their high circulation figures and because of their unpredictability. Titles whose political support can be taken for granted may find themselves taken for granted by prime ministers. Titles whose support is shallow or conditional will almost inevitably be treated differently. The Times and especially the Sun enjoy large readerships, and they have shown themselves to be conditional in their support for political parties. It is not surprising that they have been courted.

The Sun, in particular, has a near-mythical status in British politics. There is little evidence to support the claim that it was the Sun ‘wot won it’ for the Tories in 1992, yet many politicians still regard the Sun’s endorsement as a necessary step on the path to power. In July 1995, Tony Blair took the bold move for a Labour leader to travel to Australia to deliver a speech to News Corp executives. Reflecting on the trip in his memoirs, Blair wryly observes:

‘the country’s most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour Party, invites us into the lion’s den. You go, don’t you?’

Brown for his part was reportedly determined to have the backing of the Murdoch press when he succeeded Blair, and Cameron must have been delighted to obtain the Sun’s backing in 2009 (not that it won him a majority in 2010). In all cases, however, there is no evidence that policies were radically altered contrary to a prime minister’s preferences out of consideration for the Murdoch press.

Moreover, while Blair’s trip to Australia was the most memorable effort of any British party leader to woo a newspaper proprietor, both he and his successors have assiduously courted other newspaper owners and editors. Blair was determined to win over as much of the right-wing press as possible; he read a lesson at the funeral of Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Mail, and he invited Richard Desmond, owner of the Express, to tea. Gordon Brown and David Cameron have also continued the tradition of meeting owners and editors of various newspapers when they can. In this sense the friendliness shown towards the Murdoch press is hardly exceptional. (The fact that no prime minister enjoys the unconditional support of a newspaper might be taken as evidence that the effort expended is never worth the outcome.)

In truth, concerns about Murdoch’s and his newspapers’ hold on the prime ministership are wide of the mark. Amongst proprietors, Murdoch does not enjoy an exclusive access to Number 10, and all newspapers are, to varying degrees, wooed by the prime minister and his advisers. Instead, such concerns probably have more to do with Murdoch’s ‘bogeyman’ reputation, especially among those on the left, than with his actual power.

His newspapers have not, by themselves, empowered or disempowered the British prime ministership. Recent events have also shown his own power to be somewhat more illusory than many once supposed.

Dr. Nicholas Allen is Lecturer in Politics at the Royal Holloway University of London

Ahead of tomorrow’s Young Fabian Science and Society Network event with Shadow Health Secretary, John Healey, Young Fabian member Amanjit Jhund argues the Government’s reforms are just cuts by any other name.

On Tuesday the NHS turns 63. It’s a time for many of us to celebrate: for most of us it is difficult to imagine life without it.

Yet the Health and Social Care Bill is an attack on the NHS on an unprecedented scale. The concerns for many on the left and in the medical community is that while the aims of the coalition proposals are laudable they are simply being used to mask both spending cuts within the service and the increased privatisation of the NHS.

In fact,  many of the GPs that I have spoken to are fully aware that their budgets for commissioning will only be a fraction of those administered by Primary Care Trusts currently. One GP told me recently that “it’s just a way of pushing through cuts”. While most GPs are pragmatic about the changes and will do their best for their patients no matter which system they have to work within, it is vital that the coalition are held to account on this issue.

With David Cameron purporting to defend the NHS, we must expose the hypocrisy of his words as he presides over changes that will not only slash budgets but will also take the ‘N’ out of ‘NHS’.

Happy 63rd birthday NHS. I just hope you’re still around when I’m 63.

Further reading:

• NHS needs evolution, not Tory revolution
• Briefing: Exposing the continuing flaws in the NHS reorganisation
• NHS forum GP admits private patient doubts

In this member post, Young Fabian member Debbie Moss reflects on last week’s China-EU Year of Youth roundtable event to which the Young Fabians were invited.

All politics is global.  This was the predominant lesson from last Friday’s roundtable event hosted by the Chinese embassy to celebrate the China-EU Year of Youth.  As one of the speakers commented, out on the door-step we almost invariably campaign on domestic issues.  When faced with questions about jobs and cuts to local services, we seek to explain how Labour would do things differently – cutting more slowly, investing in growth and protecting the most vulnerable.  But in today’s globalised world, our economy, and therefore the prosperity and wellbeing of British people, are inexorably linked with that of other countries.  If Labour is to continue its legacy as the party of internationalism we must integrate this into the narrative we present to voters.

On Friday, our Chinese hosts elaborated on two very welcome, interconnected themes.

First, China’s intention to play its part as a peaceful, responsible member of the international community, promoting trade as well as cultural, educational and other exchanges with Britain and Europe.  Second, China’s desire to be seen to be concerned not solely with increasing its GDP (an image often portrayed in the Western media) but also with social justice, human rights and the environment.

Pre-empting Western concerns about China’s one-party state, lack of democracy and use of capital punishment, officials often repeated that theirs was still a “developing” country, implying at times that China was moving teleologically towards more or less European norms in these areas.  Equally though, we were told that China would chart its own course rather than develop according to any Western programme.  Do China’s leaders believe their country will and/or should one day adopt human rights policies like those in Europe? It was hard to tell.

There are some areas though, on which we already agree.  There was consensus among Chinese officials and young people from across the British political spectrum on the importance of our “partnership for growth” as championed by David Cameron and President Hu Jintau.  Trade is of course a key plank in our bilateral relationship with the world’s second largest economy and solutions to the financial crisis must be as global as the problem.  It was reassuring too though to hear support for the presence of the 100,000 or so Chinese students studying in the UK.  I hope that young Conservatives and Liberal Democrats can play a role in influencing their leaders in Government whose controversial proposals to limit immigration, including student immigration, threaten to undermine the excellence and international standing of our universities.

I could not agree more with Nick Maxwell on the need to foster relations between British and European citizens and their Chinese counterparts.  This plays an essential role, complementary to that of diplomatic exchanges.  Meetings of ministers and ambassadors can achieve many things, but cannot alone facilitate the shared understanding and respect between peoples which our Chinese friends rightly emphasised throughout the event.

The discussion shed light on diverse areas of policy: domestic as well as foreign.  Above all, young British speakers as well as those who identified as Chinese-British spoke of the frustrating lack of Mandarin teaching in our schools.  This resonates for those of us who frequently experience embarrassment when traveling in Europe or around the world, as we realise that our language skills pale in comparison to our hosts, who often converse confidently in English and/or other foreign tongues.   To prepare our young people for the globalised 21st century, surely our education system must do more to prioritise language teaching.

Labour’s current policy review is a unique opportunity for fresh thinking.  Hopefully it will have a strong international element.  The party’s new vision for Britain must take account of our role in an increasingly interconnected global community.

In this member post, Young Fabian member Timothee Vlandas dissects Cameron’s claim that proposed changes to the welfare system are “radical”.

“The most ambitious, fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system”

With these words Cameron described the recent proposals by the Liberal-Conservative coalition to reform the welfare state. The changes have been widely criticised because of their potential impact on current recipients. While disagreements are likely over what ought to be the standard of living of people not in work and how much their choices are to blame for their situation, it is less contentious that children should, by and large, be spared from these debates.

One way to assess whether they are likely to be is to look at the probable impact of welfare changes on child poverty rates. But before looking at the possible evolution of poverty rates, it’s worth having a quick look at the long term picture.

Child poverty rates were between 10 and 15% during the 60s and early 70s. Thatcher once said: ” Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.” On 4 May 1979, Thatcher became Prime Minister, a post she would hold until 1990, while overseeing a rise to nearly 30% of the child poverty rate during that time.

When Major stepped down and Blair took over in 1997, it was around 25%. Blair arguably managed to bring it down slightly above 20%, hardly a huge change, though one should take into account that this occurred in the context of rising median incomes, and hence higher poverty thresholds.

With this brief historical perspective in mind, let’s now turn to the question of the likely impact of the coalition’s tax and benefit reforms on child poverty rates. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies Briefing Note looks at these issues. The estimated impact, as summarised in the IFS note, is to reduce poverty for working age people without children while increasing by about 100,000 poverty for those with children.

While not as detrimental as one could have feared, it is hard to see anything ambitious in such a forecast. In fact, what makes these proposals to further retrench the welfare state so absurd is that it is already so limited in comparative terms. The child poverty rates is just the more extreme manifestation of the deficiencies of the British welfare state.

The UK has one of lowest net replacement rates of unemployment benefits in the EU15. With only 54% of previous net earnings replaced by unemployment benefits in 2004. Only Ireland had a lower replacement rate. The average duration of its unemployment insurance was only 6 months, the lowest in the EU15 together with Italy (OECD).

This is made worse by the lowest employment protection legislation in Europe. Against this backdrop, very little is spent on active labour market programs such as training schemes to help the unemployed get back into jobs.

Overall, an excessive welfare state is therefore not the problem. In 2007, the UK spent 20.5% of its GDP on public social expenditures, behind most other European countries: Germany (25.2%), France (28.4%), Italy (24.9%), Austria (26.4%), and Belgium (26.3%). By the mid-2000s, only Italy and Portugal had higher inequality after taxes and transfers (OECD).

A truly ambitious reform of the welfare state would address the shocking level of child poverty and provide the basis for a fully developed social insurance system.

• Timothy blogs at euwelfarestates.blogspot.com.