Bozo Fleeces The Red Wall

It was not so long ago that our free and fearless press was at the peak of its pearl-clutching righteousness, when Labour under Jeremy Corbyn proposed a tax increase for those earning more than £80,000 a year. High TIRRIBLE! Dem thase rotten SAYSHLISTS! But now that the boot is so firmly on the other foot, and alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is proposing robbing the poor, all is changed.

Bozo and his cabinet of sycophants and no-marks has been considering the problem of how social care is paid for. At present, many families end up having to sell off assets - like property - to pay for their parents and other elderly relatives to have safe and secure accommodation in care homes. So what’s the solution from The Blue Team?

To no surprise at all, it’s a solution that hits the least well off disproportionately. The Tories are proposing an increase in National Insurance contributions of 1.25 percentage points, hiking the tax by just over 10% - at the same time as the £20 a week uplift in Universal Credit, brought in during the pandemic, is ended: 40% of those benefiting are in work.

Screw over the poor? Just a bit of sport

And not all costs will be met by the new régime, as the BBC has reported. “People will no longer pay more than £86,000 in care costs - that is, for actual care, rather than accommodation - over their lifetime, from October 2023 … Those with between £20,000 and £100,000 in assets will get means-tested help towards costs from their local council”.

This is an exceptionally lame front page

There is more. “People in this bracket will not have to contribute more than 20% of their eligible assets per year, but might have to contribute from income … Those who own less than £20,000 will not have to pay towards care costs from their assets at all, but might have to contribute from their income”. MIGHT have to still contribute from income.

And guess what? "The changes are expected to raise £12bn a year … The government says that, for three years, all the money will go towards easing the NHS backlog, before more of it is moved into social care”. Also, this is a move that benefits the better-off to the detriment of the less well-off, as MPs from both wings of the Labour Party showed.

Jon Trickett, who represents Hemsworth: “Uxbridge houses, in the PM’s seat, of £500,000, have £410,000 of inheritance protected … Hemsworth houses in my seat of £130,000 will leave just £44,000 protected”. Chris Bryant, representing Rhondda: “70.2% of people in the Rhondda own their own home. Average house price is c. £98k just above £86k cap”.

More and more, this sounds like a policy dreamt up by those who think that property in the south-east commuter belt is “average”. It isn’t. And it’s those so-called Red Wall seats that will take the biggest hit. But, despite the giveaway exchange between BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, telling “Not everyone will pay. In fact the poorest will pay” and Bozo responding “Yes, but everyone will benefit”, the media line is remarkably tolerant.

The Murdoch Sun merely calls this a “gamble”. Good old Boris rolling the dice. Even the Guardian can only manage “PM stakes reputation on £12bn health plan”. Had it been Jezza, he’d have been flayed for this: Gordon Brown was, for far less.

And no mention of £37bn spaffed up the wall on test and trace, or the rest of the massive corruption of this Government. The poor get screwed. And our media class doesn’t care.

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