On his latest round of public appearances, ex-PM Gordon Brown has called for the scrapping of the two-child benefit rule, saying “there are over 4.5 million children in poverty in Britain today, and that figure will continue to rise because of the legacy of conservative policy.”
In a joint letter with 14 other anti-poverty leaders (published on X), he further claims “getting rid of the two-child tax limit is the most cost effective way to lift 350,000 kids out of poverty”.
The two-child benefit rule was introduced 2017. It limited child tax credit (the child element of universal credit) to the first two children in a family. Children born before that date were still eligible, and exemptions included twins/triplets, adopted children, kinship care and children conceived as a result of non-consensual sex.
Redistributing wealth – no long-term plan
Brown is well known for his socialist leanings, frivolity with the public purse and, maybe most famously, for selling off around half of the UK’s gold reserves in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the market was at a 20-year low. How very impreduent of the man who claimed to epitomise prudence.
He was billed as having tackled child poverty during his tenure as chancellor (1997-2007), introducing the child tax credit and working tax credit to support low income families, the national minimum wage and free school meals.
Critics at the time warned these measures would not bring around fundamental change to deeply embedded structural problems as the policies were based around the socialistic Keynesian economics of printing, taxing and spending, which only really result in a redistribution of cash from businesses and higher earners. And that only serves to deter them from investing further in the UK.
Brown eyes opportunity to push social agenda
Shortly after coming to power last year, Labour under Keir Starmer set up child poverty review which Brown submitted evidence to including a proposal to tax the gambling industry to raise around £3bn annually. In his evidence, he claims this raising of extra tax would be enough to lift 500,000 children out of poverty. He qualified the plan by citing his own policies’ past successes in a style befitting of true socialist with a belief in his own virtue.
In an online pamphlet, “The Child Poverty Emergency,” co-authored with Douglas Beattie, Ross Christie and Peter Tomkins, Brown says child poverty is growing in scale and severity. As with all good political propaganda, however, there is little mention of the effect another social program will have on the already failed UK economy and its immiserated taxpayers.
Running out of other people’s money
It is always worth remembering that when Browns’ Labour party was voted out of office in 2010, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, left a note to the incoming Conservative-led coalition that simply read “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam”.
A tongue-in-cheek piece of gallows humour, no doubt, but absolutely indicative of the resultant policies guided by the moral superiority of a political class who love to spend other people’s money.
