Lee Anderson is the perfect avatar for a cost of living culture war
The divisive MP looks a willing advocate for a cost of living campaign that leans heavily into tropes about "personal responsibility"
There are two frames that come up time and time again when politicians talk about the economy.
Conservatives try to frame economic and social issues through the lens of “personal responsibility” while progressives tend to highlight structural issues instead.
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is struggling. In particular as this polling by Survation shows, he’s overwhelmingly seen as “out of touch” by voters in the Red Wall. And this is probably why Sunak has promoted the controversial northern MP, Lee Anderson, to the position of deputy chair of the Conservative Party.
Anderson’s caricature northern harshness signals that the “personal responsibility” frame is here to stay. Indeed, the MP has talked openly of his desire to open a new front in the seemingly endless politically motivated culture war.
But I think Sunak is taking a gamble.
To date, the cost of living crisis has only seen occasional examples of the personal responsibility frame that I talked about in this piece. And people who regularly hold focus groups about this kind of thing say there isn’t much evidence of a public that’s baying for “it’s your fault you’re poor” welfare narratives.
In fact, the public seem pretty clear in their own minds about where responsibility for the cost of living crisis sits:
energy companies,
profiteering businesses and
politicians who they think should do more to protect people.
Far from pointing the finger at each other, the public are very much aware of the structural, economic and political factors that have driven down living standards.
This feels different to the 2010s when a “shirkers versus strivers” rhetoric was used to justify austerity. But things could change. In fact the government is signalling quite loudly that it intends to start scapegoating sick people in the forthcoming budget.
Everything about the rhetoric of “30p Lee” Anderson suggests he’s the perfect bullet catcher for a billionaire Prime Minister who can’t speak human to the “Red Wall” base.
The BBC’s review of its economics language is good, but can someone “have a word” with the Bank of England?
While the government tries to intimidate sick people back to work, the Bank of England has said it wants to kick more people on to the dole queue!
And in keeping with these pandemic times an evergreen “medicinal” metaphor was rolled out recently to provide justification for it.
Bloomberg quoted the Bank of England Chief Economist, Huw Pill (Yes “Pill” I kid you not!!) talking of the bank’s intention to “cure” the “virus” of inflation by putting people out of work using a “harsh medicine” all of its own: higher interest rates.
“Statistics are people, with the tears wiped away”
Let’s not forget that it will be actual human beings, with bodies and families and children who will be the victims of Pill’s medicine.
Yet medical euphemisms are a go-to rhetorical move for some economists when they want to avoid talking about the human consequences of policy.
These florid comments came after the BBC courageously published a critique of its own economics reporting that questioned the use of lazy and misinformed metaphors by its own journalistic staff.
But with Bank of England officials breathlessly trotting out dehumanising language like this almost unchallenged (kudos to Bloomberg for picking it up), it’s clear that the problem runs deeper than the loose language of a few political reporters at the BBC.