Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

by Rutger Bregman

In fact, conservative criticism of the old nanny state hits the nail on the head. The current tangle of red tape keeps people trapped in poverty. It actually produces dependence. Whereas employees are expected to demonstrate their strengths, social services expects claimants to demonstrate their shortcomings; to prove over and over that an illness is sufficiently debilitating, that a depression is sufficiently bleak, and that chances of getting hired are sufficiently slim. Otherwise your benefits are cut. Forms, interviews, checks, appeals, assessments, consultations, and then still more forms – every application for assistance has its own debasing, money-guzzling protocol. “It tramples on privacy and self-respect in a way inconceivable to anyone outside the benefit system,” says one British social services worker. “It creates a noxious fog of suspicion.”37 This isn’t a war on poverty; it’s a war on the poor.