Politicians do like to lump people together. In recent years we’ve had the squeezed middle, the just-about-managing, hard working families and (who could forget?) Nick Clegg’s “alarm clock Britain.”
To this list of amorphous jargon we must now add “working people.” Labour figures have been leaning on the phrase for months, not least as part of a pledge not to raise taxes on this ill-defined group.
Just before the election, Keir Starmer was asked to describe exactly who fits into this category, replying “people who earn their living.” A fair-minded person might take this to mean “anyone with a job” – but he clarified that, in his mind at least, it means people who “rely on [public] services” which narrows it down a bit.
Sensing perhaps that he hadn’t really zeroed in on a particular demographic, he went further, suggesting the label also applied to those “who don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble.”
At this point, Rachel Reeves rode to the rescue, telling journalists that “working people” are simply “those people who go out and work and earn their money through work.” The Reeves definition rather widened the net again, so she also focused on the savings point to try and bring some specificity to the debate. “Some people, who go out to work, haven’t been able to build up savings,” she said, before adding that “many other people, who go out to work, have had to run down their savings.”
This is undoubtedly true. So, is a lack of savings the key distinguisher? Er, no. The Chancellor went on to acknowledge that “there are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up, and those are working people as well.”
Taking all of that into account, it’s not unreasonable to consider that someone on a £100K salary is very much a working person, whether or not they have savings. Might the Chancellor have a Halloween shock in store for them come Budget day? The mood music at present should be enough to unnerve them.
And as for everyone else? Well, a combination of fiscal drag and new business taxes will likely ensure that millions of people end up paying more tax, regardless of how Starmer and Reeves choose to define them.