Another day, another policy leak. This morning government proposals to shorten the working week have made their way into the papers. According to initial reports, the policy – championed by Deputy PM and former trade union official Angela Rayner – will give workers more power to “compress” their hours, meaning longer days Monday to Thursday in exchange for a three-day weekend starting Friday.
And so an old sore is opened between Britons who can reasonably claim to be working while they sit on their couch and those who can’t. The divide, between the laptop class and the rest, has always been there – before computers these distinct groups were euphemistically called “white-collar” and “blue-collar” workers.
But it came to the fore in the pandemic. The people who actually kept the country going, broadly blue-collar workers in difficult jobs, saw not a lick of furlough money, Zoom calls or sourdough baking. The laptop classes got used to all three, and have refused to give them up. These two groups interacted in uncomfortable moments of servitude – the delivery driver arriving on the doorstep of the sedentary spreadsheet drone to drop off another takeaway lunch.
This seems more likely to ratify the not-so-hard-won privileges of the laptop class than help the real grafters
Our understanding of the new proposal is currently patchy, and perhaps it is too early to call it a “right to skive”, but it seems more likely to ratify the not-so-hard-won privileges of the laptop class than help the real grafters.
But there is something broader at play here. As Labour settles into government, it is suddenly apparent that the cynics were wrong. The Red and Blue teams are not two cheeks of the same Centrist derriere. In fact Labour and Tory ministers are philosophically, even psychologically, distinct in their approach to the power of the state.
Over the past few years the Conservatives, through circumstance and incompetence, came to wield state power much more forcefully than they would have liked. Presiding over massive lockdowns and huge spending programmes like the energy price cap, Tory ministers had the pitiful expression of dogs surveying their own vomit. It wasn’t in their nature and they were embarrassed, but they still did it half-heartedly because it seemed necessary.
But for many Labour politicians, using state power to reach into the lives of voters is something they have long dreamed because they believe this is a hyper-effective way to improve lives and “do good”. Consider the past few days. Only 24 hours before the four-day week proposals were leaked in the Telegraph, another huge interventionist policy on smoking was revealed on the front page of The Sun. And the lack of obvious necessity in both cases is glaring.
Many companies have independent arrangements with staff on flexible working, obtained often through consultation. These are based on the unique circumstances of each firm: size, sector, management style, etc. There are indeed some firms that choose to deny staff any chance to work-from-home. A little harsh perhaps, but staff are free to seek employment with a more chillaxed boss. Every Londoner knows, when (s)he boards a half empty tube at Friday rush hour that, since the Covid-19 pandemic, a fairly organic move to “WFH” has spread across the white-collar economy in Britain. Yet the government apparently cannot resist the urge to legislate and codify. Perhaps, when you are holding a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail.
Similarly on the strict proposals on smoking: any smoker knows that our zone of comfort has been shrinking for years. In the nearly two decades since the indoor smoking ban, passed by Labour in 2007, we have gone from carelessly puffing away at restaurant tables to cringing on rainy street corners. Now many hospitality businesses make a point of banning smoking even in their outdoor areas, or adopting a half-and-half approach where only a small patch of a beer garden or café patio may be used for smoking.
These organic arrangements, which vary from business to business, are all perfectly legal. And while smokers may begrudge their increasing marginalisation, it’s a fair balance between the freedom of some to enjoy a ciggie, and of others to breath fresh air. Yet once again the new government, apparently with little prompt, picks up the sledgehammer of legislation and decides to smash through this peaceable settlement.
On the point about Labour ministers being psychologically bent on this sort of intervention, I note that the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who would help preside over the ban, has form on this. When he was President of the National Union of Students (NUS) in 2009, Streeting brought in minimum alcohol pricing at student union bars because cheap drinks, quote, “encourage students to drink to dangerous levels, and should have no place in our Students’ Union bars”. He and his colleagues, it seems, have a tendency to think people cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions – politicians and bureaucrats must decide on their behalf.
But hey-ho, that’s the British system. Labour have a massive majority and can pretty much do what they like. But it does seem odd that Keir Starmer vowed in one of his first speech’s as Prime Minister to “tread more lightly on your lives”. That has quickly been revealed as meaningless filler, if not an outright deception.
