Second-rate Britain 7
The UK pension and life expectancy controversy rumbles on.
Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, was interviewed by Amol Rajan on the Today programme (31/03/23) about her new trade deal in the Pacific. This much-heralded deal is worth 0.08% of GDP. The governments own figures calculate that leaving the EU cost us 4% of GDP so Badenock's deal is hardly doing to make up the loss in EU trade.
What has this got to do with pensions and life expectancy? A lot. Without a vibrant economy, good pensions become unaffordable and ordinary people are made to work longer and longer, to the point where many will die before they reach official retirement age.
I mention Kemi Badenoch because she is one of many self-proclaimed right-wing politicians in Sunak's administration, and our pensions and life expectancy are directly linked to their beliefs and behaviour: beliefs inform and shape legislation.
Badenoch, and right-wing politicians like her, are ideologues. They put belief before evidence when drawing up the laws we have to live by. We all know the terrible damage Liz Truss, an ideologue in the extreme, did to our economy: so extreme even her own party couldn’t stomach her!
Badenoch is as bad.
When asked by Amol Rajan if this year’s economic figure of 0.1% growth was acceptable she replied:
“Even getting 0.1% GDP (growth) is actually us managing the economy well”.
Really? The IMF reported Eurozone growth at 3.5% for 2022. If Badenoch’s 0.1% growth is managing the economy well what does a failing UK economy would look like?
Rajan put two points to Badenoch.
“In the decade to 2007 Britain’s productivity growth was second only to America in the G7. In the decade to 2019 growth stalled to just 0.7% a year making Britain the 2nd slowest in the G7."
These economic figures, said Rajan, translate into:
“…real felt human experience…After 13 years of your party being in power life expectancy in this country is rising for the rich people and falling for the poor people. Can you think of a more severe indictment of your parties record in power than that?”
Badenoch then made a number of excuses for her party failing to grow the economy, and on falling life expectancy for the poor said:
“We have done and spent so much on things like the NHS and education. Obviously it is very disappointing.”
Apart from this being a totally misleading statement regarding monies spent on the NHS and education - spending has actually fallen in both these sectors as a percentage of GDP over the last decade – her reaction to life expectancy falling for the poor as being “disappointing” is callous in the extreme.
But she isn’t the only callous right-wing politician in the Tory ranks.
“Jacob Rees-Mogg suggests state pension age should be raised to 72” (Daily Mail: 30/3/23)
Rees-Mogg, like Badenoch, is an ideologue of the worse kind: they simply REFUSE to acknowledge facts.
Reese-Mogg, according to the Mail,
…”argued that for the age to reflect improvements in life expectancy since 1940 it would need to be four years higher than the 68 currently being mooted.”
In the same way Badenoch has publicly stated that there is no institutional racism in Britain (please read the reports on the Met and the Fire Service), Reese-Mogg ignores the figures for life expectancy for the poor.
If the Tories remain in power we in Britain face the prospect of watching younger French retirees sitting on Mediterranean beaches sipping champagne while we, providing we are lucky enough to live long enough, will be slaving away into our seventies.
