John Kay was one of the original New Labour gurus. It’s therefore significant to see him incline, however cautiously, towards Iain Duncan Smith’s thinking on poverty.
He begins by asking what poverty actually means in today’s world:
Essentially, this is the concept of social exclusion – an area of policy that was once closely associated with New Labour. However, as John Kay explains, it is now Iain Duncan Smith who is developing the idea:
Though careful to distance himself from old-fashioned ideas about the ‘undeserving poor’, Kay argues that “understanding the multiple facets of poverty is a necessary guide to how that money is best spent.” And this is where he appears to endorse Duncan Smith’s decision to overhaul the official definition of poverty – and the targets that go with it:
It all seems so obvious now, doesn’t it?
That’s because it always was obvious. Gordon Brown got away with it for so long because our political culture doesn’t care about the really big mistakes. Mess up in some small way – say, by flunking a Newsnight interview – and you’ll be the target of an instant outpouring of exaggerated contempt, but if you fundamentally misconceive a policy that impacts upon millions of lives then, don’t worry, it won’t be noticed until it’s much too late.