You are not included

Are you socially-excluded? If so, what exactly have you been excluded from? Is it from the basic things of life like a decently-paid job, an active community life, and having a spouse and children? Or is it from life’s pleasures, like eating Marks and Spencers’ ready meals, going on foreign holidays, or even membership of an exclusive London club?

‘Social exclusion’ is a wonderfully vague phrase promoted by governments because it avoids the need to talk about poverty and inequality. It is never made clear precisely which sorts of people are socially-excluded, or what precisely they are excluded from. Nor is evident why they are excluded in the first place. The term ‘socially-excluded’ has at different times been used to include people on low incomes, disabled people, people from ethnic and racial minorities, and even the elderly and the young. When the phrase first became part of political discourse in the 1990s, it was agreed that the problem lay with the excluders - with the lack of opportunities for well-paid work, with poor schools and with discrimination. Now governments increasingly suggest that the problem lies with the excluded, and that ‘social inclusion’ really means coming off welfare benefits. So the unemployed, single parents, the disabled and the chronically sick are to be hectored into taking poorly-paid work, irrespective of the fact that work of any kind is getting hard to find. Of course, if it all gets too much for the socially-excluded, cognitive behaviour therapy will be made available to cheer them up.

But the hectoring received by the ‘socially-excluded’ is only a rather more extreme version of what the rest of us have to put up with. This Government have sent leaflets to our homes telling us that we must all eat more healthily, that we must wash our hands, and use a tissue when we sneeze. Our children are assessed and examined more frequently than in any other country in the world, so that teachers can be harassed into improving their school’s position in national league tables. To supposedly prevent crime, we are watched, scanned and regulated by the largest CCTV network in the world. To supposedly prevent terrorism, basic legal protections are stripped away, with old men arrested as ‘terrorists’ if they heckle the prime minister at a Labour Party conference.

Yet there are small groups of people who have been exempt from all this monitoring, assessment and harassment - our financial sector and our members of Parliament. Financial leaders have squandered cash on foolhardy investments and driven their institutions to bankruptcy. Once found out, they have retired on very generous pensions while their banks have been funded at immense expense for the taxpayer. Many members of Parliament have used an elastic expenses system to refurbish one or more houses, make large capital gains, clean their moats, employ their spouses on generous salaries, and buy porn videos. When they are defeated at the next general election, they too will retire on a generous superannuation. Both bankers and members of Parliament explain away their behaviour by saying they acted within the rules, and that their activities were subject to audit. But this audit and inspection has been a sham - designed to give the impression of regulation while actually allowing them a free hand.

A sham if this kind exists because the powerful believe in their hearts that those who make the rules need not live by them. This network of beneficiaries constitute the ‘politically-included’, who live from the savings and taxes of the rest of us (the politically-excluded) who must pay for our own mortgages, rents, patio heaters, dogfood, moat-cleaning and so on. Nevertheless, this experience may be character-building, and we have a chance in future elections to improve the characters of our current politicians by enabling them too to experience the delights of political exclusion.