The middle just got moved

By Toby Flux

After I got home from work on Monday evening I opened my email to read Ed Miliband’s speech. Of course the pre-speech press briefings had given me an indication of what it was going to be about, but it didn’t take long before I realised that this was no ordinary speech. It was the speech I’d been waiting for a Labour Leader to make for years.

Firstly, it was a very brave speech for a man the right-wing press desperately want to brand “Red Ed”, and not only because he dared return to the notion of the “squeezed middle” after that awful Radio 4 interview which left many confused about who Ed was talking about. Did he mean middle income earners, or the middle classes? Those of us shouting at our radios knew it was neither exclusively, but did Ed really “get it” or was the “squeezed middle” just another soundbite designed to appeal to the floating voter?

Well, if we were left with doubts that Ed “gets it” back in November, only a dunce or somebody with an agenda could fail to recognise after this speech that he not only “gets it”, but isn’t afraid to articulate the fact. How nice of The Guardian to prove the point by publishing an attack by George Osborne the following day in which he claimed that, once again, Ed had failed to define who was a member of the squeezed middle:

“Let’s pass over his failure in every interview to define it – his last effort included around 90% of taxpayers”, the multi-millionaire chancellor mocked, inadvertently demonstrating that he knows full well who Ed was talking about – the vast majority of us.

Let’s face it, it wasn’t that long ago that Labour was associated with being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, so it was something of a welcome relief to hear from Ed Miliband say that “we should be willing to talk about the inequality in our society”. It’s not that Ed’s ‘New Generation’ Labour Party doesn’t want people to aspire to success; it’s that Labour, at last, also recognises that the reality of living and working in Britain for too many of us has been a story of “struggling to keep up: working harder for longer, for less.”

“For many decades rising prosperity benefitted the bulk of working people. But that assumption is breaking down,”

“While those at the top have continued to do well, middle earners are no longer guaranteed to share in our nation’s success. The result is a quiet crisis that is unfolding day-by-day in kitchens and living rooms in every town, village and city up and down this country.”

If that’s music to your ears, so to speak, it would be a mistake to think this speech was just a partisan attack on the VAT increase, the massive cuts, or the lack of a growth strategy from the Tory-led coalition. Instead it was a recognition that deeper forces have been at work, including during the Labour years, despite the Minimum Wage and Tax Credits:

“The root causes lie in long-term changes in our economy. Over the last few decades less of what our economy produces has been paid out in wages – and more in profits. The gains in productivity we have seen have not been reflected in earnings.”

“But this is only part of the story. There has also been growing inequality in earnings. Since the late 1970s wages have grown almost twice as fast for the top 10% as they have for those in the middle. Since 1979, 22p of every extra pound earned has gone into the pockets of the best paid 1%. This tiny fraction of the workforce now takes home more than 14% of all earnings. Our economy has become progressively less fair and the losers have been those on middle and low incomes.”

So there we have it: the “squeezed middle” isn’t just about middle incomes, or even about the middle class (which the vast majority consider themselves to be, rightly or wrongly), it’s about all those who haven’t benefited from past growth to the extent that they expected. It’s about those on low incomes hit by “economic migration and greater labour market flexibility” as well as those on good incomes still struggling to raise their children:

“A single-earner couple with two children with earnings of £44,000 sounds well off. But such a family will be hard hit by the £1,750 a year they will lose in one fell swoop when child benefit is scrapped.”

The message is clear: George Osborne can continue to help the wealthy and disproportionately well-paid if he wants, Labour will be standing up for the rest of us – the 90% the chancellor mocked.

So the next time you read, or hear, a journalist say that they don’t understand who the squeezed middle are, or demand a definition based on incomes or class, point them to this speech, and tell them proudly: “The middle just got moved”.