The Squeezed Middle
No wonder there is confusion as to what it means, because it is nonsense. Ed Milliband knows that. It was a quick soundbite. It has no substance. Everybody feels squeezed.
If we go back to the founding of the modern welfare state after WWII by the Attlee government and the introduction of universal benefits, we find a fairly threadbare middle class too proud to seek help but happy to receive it, along with the poor for whom it was a lifeline. The Conservatives accepted this and became the champion of welfare, because their supporters liked it. The middle classes were slower to embrace state education (and still are at the more affluent end) but all used the NHS, pocketed the Child Benefit and collected (no bank credits then) the Old Age Pension, as it was known. This could be done with discretion at Harrods Post Office in Knightsbridge. I had an aunt who made use of the peculiar facility. Apparently she was bold among her posh friends, who were too proud and went without.
We are now in a completely different world. The middle class has sprawled to include almost everyone, leaving an underclass, an ignored aristocracy and a celebrity class; the latter living a lifestyle involving an orgy of spending because for very little reason, money is thrown at them. All this is slowly beginning to fall down. First the banks tottered. Rescuing them has put whole countries at financial risk and sent one, Ireland, to the wall. Cutting is now in hand on an undreamed of scale, yet its full impact is yet to be felt. There is no certainty that the vast borrowings can ever be paid off.
We cannot tell what will come after. We can tell that the middle classes with three cars and two homes who have been getting child benefit, free healthcare and state education for their kids, all on the taxpayer, are going to have to get real. Too much of their income has been used to spend for fun, not to meet family obligations and responsibilities. The money has fuelled property prices so that these assets are now valued way above their worth. It has put up costs so that we cannot even produce simple things like light bulbs competitively for the home market, let alone for export. This will have to stop. The model has crashed. It is very near collapse.
In future people who can afford to will have to make a proper contribution to the basic obligations of citizenship and family life and go without handouts they do not need. Call it squeezing the middle if you wish. In fact it is simple arithmatic. Follow the numbers. Start at the £10 trillion national indebtedness. The thing about numbers is they are not open to interpretation. They are matters of fact.