Most People Don’t Enjoy the Theatre of Cruelty
Britain is a deeply divided nation but a majority of the public, apart from the very richest, hold views that can be interpreted as compassionate towards those struggling in society
The British public can, quite often, be painted as cruel.
Between 24 January and 10 February 2023, YouGov undertook a survey of adults, compiling the results under the headline ‘what should living standards look like for people on benefits, minimum wage, and average earnings?’.
The polling firm interpreted the survey to be suggesting that 75% of British people thought that those on benefits should not be able to afford a holiday (in the UK). YouGov also reported that 59% thought that they should not be able to fork out for a basic laptop, and that 43% believed that a home internet connection was not warranted for those relying on the state.
This survey was used to suggest that more than a third of the British public – 37% – thought that their poorer neighbours (those so poor that they required benefits to live) should not be able to afford haircuts, since they could cut their own hair.
It was even suggested that a quarter of the British public – 26% – thought that there was no need for this group to be able to afford food that allowed them and their children to eat a balanced and healthy diet.
It was reported that a quarter – 24% – did not believe that they should be able to pay their electricity, gas or water bills.
Could the British public really be this cruel? Surely no one in their right mind would think that it was decent to deny other people the right to clean water?
So what had happened? Had the real cruel nature of a large minority of the British people been revealed? Was it true that a majority of them believed that it was fine for people who are struggling in life to not even have access to the most basic of computers required for filling in benefits forms and to conduct so many day-to-day tasks?
Do three-quarters of all the adults that you walk past on the street really think, in the privacy of their own minds, that those around them who are claiming anything from the state, and their children, should never have a holiday, never go away from their home – never even pitch a tent in a field? Or at least not until they can entirely stand on their own two feet, financially?
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Many of those filling in the survey were confused about what they were being asked. Specifically, about whether the question was: ‘should this be attainable?’ or ‘is it attainable?’. The way the word should had been placed in the survey question meant that its interpretation by many was ambiguous.
Fortunately, YouGov ran a second survey commissioned by Carnegie UK, within the same timeframe in which it ran the first. In contrast to the first survey, the question YouGov asked in its second survey was much clearer: “To your knowledge, do you think that the Government is currently offering too much, too little, or about the right amount of support to help people through the rise in the cost of living?”. The YouGov Survey for Carnegie went into the field in the four days of 3 to 6 February 2023.
Carnegie UK compiled the findings in a report titled ‘the long shadow of the cost of living emergency’. Its authors, Amy Baker and Hannah Paylor, revealed that as compared to a year earlier, by early 2023, one in six people were less able to exercise, two in six less able to afford a healthy diet, and three in every six (half the entire population) were now much less able to partake in the norms of society. Eating out with friends or family was no longer an option for many. The cinema had become unaffordable to half of society. At the extremes, a growing number of people talked of being “freezing cold to the point of feeling ill… [too] scared to turn on the heating”.
Corroborating the Carnegie findings, the Resolution Foundation’s 2023 UK Living Standards Report showed that the majority of children with two siblings in the UK went hungry at least once a week. Over the course of the next year, the economic situation became even worse.
By early 2023, even most of the well-off had been affected by inflation. More than a fifth of people in families with a household income of £70,000 or more said they found it hard to maintain a healthy diet as the cost of food, rent or a mortgage, fuel and many other essentials soared.
This second survey revealed that two-thirds of parents were, by then, less able to participate in leisure activities in 2023 than in 2022, which included taking their children on an annual holiday.
Even before the cost of living crisis began, in the pre-pandemic years, more than a third of British families no longer had an annual holiday because they could not afford one. This has been the case for at least 20 years. The Government’s annual Household Below Average Incomes report regularly demonstrates this, in a story that is now such old news that it is hardly ever reported.
Almost no one believes that cruelty is acceptable when they are asked a straight question, rather than a confusing one.
The second YouGov survey revealed that a majority of all adults in all families earning less than the top 1% believed that ‘the Government is offering too little support to help people through the rising cost of living’.
Only in the very richest of families – those with household incomes of more than £150,000 – were a majority of people satisfied with levels of state support for those in need. The second survey did not delve into the views of those adults (a minority among all households apart from the richest, where they were in the majority) who thought that current Government support was adequate.
However, two people in every five of this group were sympathetic to the need for action. Even among the top 1% of income earners then, some 40% are not cruel.
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Britain is a deeply divided nation. But a majority of people in it, other than the very richest of all, hold views that are to the left of the main two political parties: Labour and the Conservatives.
A majority do care and are not callous. This has been known for many decades by social scientists, and has been popularised in a number of recent books such as Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (it is even a favourite among multi-millionaires – Richard Branson loved it).
Nevertheless, there are clearly some people out there who do not conform to this – although, thankfully, always in a minority except among the very richest households. But even among the rich, there is now growing scorn for selfishness.
Some people are made more bitter and heartless the longer they live in an unequal society, even more so the more unequal it becomes. Fear and loathing is greatest among those at the very top, despite their civility and manners. It is those with the most that orchestrate the theatre of cruelty. It has always been so, from when the Colosseum in Rome was first built, through to ‘stop the boats’ becoming a political slogan.
But it is our choice as to whether we want to settle anymore for mere bread and circuses.
Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford University and the author of ‘Inequality and the 1%’
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