Six weeks ago, I was doing what I’ve always done – working as a plumber in people’s houses. I’d just completed a plastering qualification and was looking forward to putting it to good use. Now, I’m here in parliament, and to call it a culture shock would be an understatement.
It’s easy to see why a lot of MPs don’t understand how hard things in the country are right now. This place is a bubble. And there just aren’t enough of us here who get it; who come from working-class backgrounds, who’ve had ordinary jobs like me.
The fact is, most people are struggling right now, finding it harder and harder to pay the bills each month, to buy the same things we usually buy at the supermarket, to get the kids new shoes every time they have a growth spurt.
Too many people I speak to say the same thing – they know they’re never far away from things unravelling even further. The washing machine breaks, they get a parking ticket, or their hours get cut at work, and the whole house of cards collapses. There’s nothing left to cut back on to make the budget add up. “Luxuries” were cut out a long time ago.
I don’t think that’s something most MPs understand – not really. They might think they do, they might say they do, but they don’t properly know what it’s like; how it feels in your bones.
Don’t get me wrong, even well-off people are feeling ripped off. People of most income levels are seeing their living standards decline. It seems like everything in this country is getting more and more expensive (even Easter eggs). Everyone is finding that their wages don’t go as far as they used to.
As I said when I was elected: working hard used to get you something. It got you a house, a decent life, holidays. Now we’re all working harder than ever, but we’re still struggling to afford the absolute basics.
The Labour government has finally bowed to pressure and is set to bring in new measures this month that it says will help people with the cost of living. But the reality is its plan isn’t good enough.
Take energy, for example. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran means that energy bills are set to rocket this summer, by more than £330 a year. But the government is refusing to commit to universal support. The Green party is clear: ordinary people should not pay for this crisis. The government should guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap, and every single pound of reckless profiteering by energy companies must be repurposed to this end.
Or water. Our already extortionate water bills in England and Wales went up by an average 5% this week, while sewage continues to be pumped into our rivers. Most people see that privatised water companies are taking us for a ride and want them renationalised, a longstanding Green party policy. But the government refuses to even consider it.
And on the two-child benefit cap, I welcome the fact that it is finally set to be scrapped next week, after relentless pressure forced a U-turn. But Labour should have done this on day one. Instead, 330,000 children were kept in poverty just because they had more than one sibling. That’s years of additional suffering, which Labour could have prevented, all for the sake of what? There is no justification.
Yet, even now, Labour ministers haven’t properly learned their lesson. They’re still refusing to scrap the household benefit cap, meaning 140,000 children will continue to be penalised simply because they are part of a larger family.
It’s baffling to me that Keir Starmer and his cabinet can be so unimaginative and lacking in boldness at this point in time. All they need to do is look at how angry people are, look at how much their constituents are suffering, look at the mood of the country. Maybe they don’t understand it. Maybe they just don’t care.
