Tag: poverty

THE MISSING CLASS

March 19, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how class is a missing category in discussions of the justice system, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 16 March 2025, under the headline “Amid all the noise about the UK’s ‘two-tier’ justice system, there is silence on class”. As so often in such debates, the controversy over new guidelines for courts from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales has obscured as much as it has illuminated. Critics have condemned them as presaging a “two-tier” justice […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: disparities in sentencing outcomes, inequality, justice system, lammy report, poverty, pre-sentence reports, racial disparities, robert jenrick, sentencing council, sentencing guidelines, shabana mahmood, two-tier justice

UNEMPLOYMENT IS NOT A MEDICAL CONDITION

October 23, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on unemployment and weightloss drugs, was published in the Observer on 20 October 2024 under the headline “Pumping the unemployed with weight-loss drugs echoes Victorian attitudes to the poor”. In early 2023, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, chief executive of the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and its UK corporate vice-president Pinder Sahota, met in Whitehall with the then health secretary Steve Barclay, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, and various health and Treasury officials. They discussed the possibilities of a […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: beveridge report, british politics, george orwell, mounjaro, poor laws, poverty, unemployment, wegovy, weight loss drugs, working class

AGAINST IMMIGRATION – AND THE WORKING CLASS

August 21, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on why many of those hostile to immigration who claim to be supportive of the working class are not, was published in the Observer on 18 August 2024 under the headline “Defending working-class interests requires more than simply opposing immigration”. “Immigration harms British workers. We must restrict immigration to improve working-class lives.” That is the subtext – and often the explicit text – of the argument from those who are hostile to immigration or wish drastically to reduce numbers. It […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-union laws, benefits, exploitation, flexible labour market, immigration, inequality, nigel farage, poverty, social care, suella braverman, trade unions, uk riots 2024, working class

PROTECT PEOPLE’S LIVES, NOT THE MING VASE

June 26, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Labour Party election policy, was published in the Observer on 23 June 2024 under the headline “Improving people’s lives should be Labour’s first priority. Not that Ming vase”. This should be an election at the heart of which are the issues of poverty, inequality, precarity and low pay. It is, after all, a campaign in which the cost of living, the state of public services, the price of austerity and the failure of politicians and institutions to […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: charles booth, child poverty, food banks, food insecurity, gig economy, job insecurity, joseph rowntree, labour party, low pay, lynsey hanley, ming vase strategy, poverty, social housing, two child benefit limit, welfare sanctions

LOW-VALUE DEGREES OR LOW-VALUE PEOPLE?

June 5, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the argument against “low value degrees”, was published in the Observer on 2 June 2024, under the headline “The affluent can have their souls enriched at university, so why not the poor as well?”. “We must crack down on low-value university degrees.” Who claimed that and when? It might have been Rishi Sunak last October. Or Sunak last July. Or Sunak the previous August. Or Nadhim Zahawi five months earlier. Or Michelle Donelan in November 2020. Or Gavin Williamson in May 2020. Or Damian Hinds the previous year. […]

Categories: Academia, Britain • Tags: apprenticeships, education, humanities, low-value degrees, poverty, rishi sunak, stem, universities

ROTTEN FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE

March 30, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the state of the welfare state in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 26 March 2023, under the headline “From the cradle to the grave, there is something rotten in the state of welfare”. From the cradle to the grave. Once that phrase was a description of the ambition of the welfare state. Now, it is an illustration of how far that old vision has frayed. An illustration, too, of the extent to which […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: benefit sanctions, childcare, inequality, jeremy hunt, life expectancy, poverty, state pensions, welfare state, workfare

MORALISING POVERTY AND MISTRANSLATING EQUALITY

February 2, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the problems in the ways we think of poverty and indequality, was my Observer column this week. It was published 29 January 2023, under the headline “Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It’s class that shapes our lives”. “There is no primary poverty left in this country,” Margaret Thatcher told the Catholic Herald in 1978, five months before she became prime minister. “There may be poverty because people don’t know how to budget, don’t know how to spend their […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: adolph reed, diversity, individualism, inequality, margaret thatcher, moralising poverty, poverty, walter benn michaels

PICTURING ANOTHER WORLD AND OUR WORLD

October 20, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the photography of Chris Killip and Graham Smith, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 16 October 2022, under the headline “To romanticise or demonise – not the only ways to frame working-class lives”. An old man walking between rows of terraced housing and, behind him, the sky erased by the huge bow of a ship being built. A teenager picking coal on a beach. A man manoeuvring his horse and cart around a car dumped […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Culture & Books • Tags: chris killip, darren mcgarvey, graham smith, lynsey hanley, photography, poverty, poverty safari, seacoalers, susan sontag, working class

THE UBERISATION OF BRITAIN

May 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on labour insecurity in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 1 May 2022, under the headline “In the name of job flexibility, ‘Uberisation’ is spreading its tentacles across society”. In the late 18th century, as the impact of the Industrial Revolution bit into the lives of the nascent working class, the high cost of fuel, one study notes, “forced inhabitants of many southern regions to abandon home cooking”. Fuel costs were much greater in the south […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: anti-union laws, fire and rehire, gig economy, labour insecurity, labour market, margaret thatcher, new labour, p&o, poverty, thatcherism, tony blair, trade unions, uberisation, working class

THE POVERTY OF MORALISM

January 26, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on poverty and social policy, was my Observer column this week. It was published 23 January 2022, under the headline “Poor people face a perfect storm. Let no one tell you it’s their own fault”. Terry Pratchett understood why most social policies fail. In his book Men At Arms, one of the characters, Samuel Vines, put forward his “‘boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”. “The reason that the rich were so rich,” Vines observed, “was because they managed to spend less money.” […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: cost of living crisis, inflation, jack monroe, poverty, samuel vimes, terry pratchett, undeserving poor, universal credit

MORTALITY, INEQUALITY AND LESSONS FROM AMERICA

September 21, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on lessons from America about the relationship between inequality and mortality rates, was my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 19 September 2021, under the headline “America’s mortality gap should sound a blaring alarm across the Atlantic”. Americans die younger than Europeans. That is true whether they are rich or poor, black or white, toddlers or OAPs. The latest confirmation of the mortality gap across the Atlantic comes from a newly published study that tracked death rates in the […]

Categories: Class, International, Politics • Tags: america, angus deaton, anne case, britain, covid 19, deaths of despair, europe, health policy, inequality, levelling up, mortality rates, poverty, race, race and class, usa

LEVELLING UP? MORE LIKE HAMMERING DOWN

July 27, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the government’s levelling up proposals, was my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 11 July 2021, under the headline “Levelling up should take many forms. And don’t forget London’s poorest need it too”. Levelling up is hard to do. Well, in one sense it is. Providing new opportunities for people and places that most need but have least access to them requires strategic vision and political will. Boris Johnson’s recent word salad of a speech, supposedly the […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: benefits, boris johnson, communities, conservative party, covid 19, inequality, levelling up, london, poverty, sick pay, social infrastructure, tories, universal credit

INEQUALITY AND THE POLITICS OF DIVISION

July 20, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the violence n South Africa, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the GB News debacle) It was published on 18 July 2021, under the headline “Gross inequality stoked the violence in South Africa. It’s a warning to us all”. “It feels qualitatively different this time.” There are few people I know in South Africa who don’t think this about the carnage now engulfing the nation. Violence was institutionalised during the years of apartheid. […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: anc, apartheid, corruption, covid 19, economic freedom fighters, identity politics, inequality, jacob zuma, police killings, poverty, racism, sectarianism, south africa

HERE’S TO SOCIAL SPACES

April 13, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the importance of social spaces, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 11 April 2021, under the headline “Full pubs are a sign of communities that work. Let’s toast their return”. There were thousands this week, shivering in some icy pub garden, raising their glass to the next step on the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, as outdoor drinking resumed. At the start of the pandemic, they could have done so in thousands more venues […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: austerity, clubs, covid 19, libraries, lockdown, music venues, pandemic, poverty, pubs, social spaces, youth clubs

THE NOBLE SAVAGES OF THE WORKING CLASS

January 26, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on contradictory perceptions of the working class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the scandal of the global distribution of Covid vaccines.) It was published on 24 January 2021, under the headline “Age-old notions of the noble savage haunt views of working-class life”. There are few things more fractured and muddled than contemporary attitudes towards working-class people. On the one hand, too many people ignore, even deny, the grim realities of […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: austerity, left behind, magic money tree, meritocracy, morality, noble savages, passing, poor, poverty, resolution foundation, rishi sunak, sam friedman, torsten bell, working class, working poor