To be born in many places in Britain is to suffer an irreversible lifelong defeat – a truncation of opportunity, of education, of access to power, of life expectancy … the vista instead is a landscape where there is often work … but it’s unsatisfying, insecure and low paid. This new work doesn’t do what the old work did: it doesn’t offer a sense of identity or community or self-worth … What, over the last few decades, has been the political “offer” to these people? In truth, nothing much.
