Cost of living crisis: Hungry? Cold? Work longer hours, say callous Tories – Laura Waddell

Rachel Maclean, safeguarding minister at the Home Office, is the latest Tory to tell Brits to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Owen Paterson resigned as the MP for North Shropshire after he was found to have broken Westminster lobbying rules (Picture: Victoria Jones/PA)

At the start of the week, the MP for Redditch in Worcestershire told Sky News that “over the long-term we need to have a plan to grow the economy and make sure that people are able to protect themselves better, whether that is by taking on more hours or moving to a better-paid job”.

Do I hear the sound of the whole nation smacking itself on the forehead? Why have we been worrying about money when we could simply get paid more? So cuckoo and cut off from reality is this way of thinking that it wouldn’t shock me if we’re a week away from one of the ghouls in government suggesting the Great British public deal with the cost-of-living crisis by working every waking hour to distract from hunger pangs.

Many of Maclean’s Conservative party colleagues have taken similar tack in recent weeks. But why do they believe it’s ever so easy to rustle up a bit of extra cash? Well, the Tories, as we know, are especially fond of second jobs.

Starting from their annual salary of £84k – more than double the mean national average of £38k – MPs are able to rake it in on the side from private consultancy gigs.

It was only last year that Tory MP Owen Paterson resigned after being found to have breached lobbying rules in Parliament, using his position to the advantage of companies he’d accepted payment from.

Some MPs are especially skilled at making money on the side. Sir Geoffrey Cox is reported to have made almost £6 million in 16 years of office through a combination of barrister work and consultancy to firms based in London, Dubai and – lovely at this time of year, presumably – the Cayman Islands. No wonder the Tories have been lobbying against caps on MPs’ second jobs – something they’ve particularly passionate about.

It’s easier to rustle up extra cash when already flush with it. We live in a UK so blighted by inequality that those in government, supposedly the public’s representatives, can and frequently do make more money from a cosy spot of consultancy on the side than a teacher or nurse might make in a year. Those extra hours our MPs pick up certainly aren’t in shift work or food service, caring or cleaning.

Hungry? Cold? Work longer hours, say the callous Tories, as somewhere in the background Jacob Rees-Mogg continues his creepy cosplay as a workhouse master. But don’t be distracted by the crack of the whip. What they’re really trying to do here is shift responsibility onto the public.

Britain has been on a grim trajectory for some time: demand for food banks has soared in the last decade; austerity continues to hit those with the least hardest.

The government’s response to all this reaching a head, now the middle classes are also feeling the squeeze at the supermarket checkout? They wash their hands of responsibility, hoping the British public will take the bait and blame the state of the economy on society’s ne'er-do-wells. Don’t fall for it.