Living standards: Tory lie: Living standards are rising: people are better off under the Tories
Labour Briefing1980sPhil Hearse (likely)Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
Unsigned, one of the issue's '15 Tory lies' (p. 3), whose writers are credited together; the attribution to Phil Hearse is Duncan Chapel's (4 November 2026), from its subject and phrasing. Transcribed from the page image, 4 Nov 2026.
Living standards
TORY LIE: Living standards are rising: people are better off under the Tories.
Are living standards really rising?
In recent years living standards for a minority in work have risen or at least held steady: but among the unemployed, and large groups of workers, they have fallen drastically.
What’s behind this paradox? There has been a massive squeeze on all benefits: virtually everyone on a state benefit is worse off under the Tories.
Employers have used declining benefit levels and the threat of unemployment to put the squeeze on low-paid workers — currently those earning less than £115 a week. These people are worse off under Thatcher, and there are more of them than there were ten years ago.
The Tories have thus impoverished a large section of the community — amounting perhaps to 25% of the population. Meanwhile the boom in banking, finance and some high-tech industries, mainly in the South East, has led to an increase in real income for others. Tax and mortgage concessions have also favoured them. Under the Tories, we have seen a dramatic widening of the gulf between rich and poor.
Gains made by better-off workers are fragile. Over the past two years inflation has been at a low ebb. Now it is rising again and likely to go on doing so. The result is that temporary wage gains are wiped out.
The Tories claim that the economy has “turned the corner”. This is nonsense. In the last two years the British economy has grown from a low base by about 2% each year — much slower than other capitalist countries.
Britain’s balance of payments is steadily worsening as income from North Sea oil declines. Overall, British capitalism’s competitive position is getting worse. A new economic crisis is on the cards — and Thatcher wants the election out of the way before it arrives.