In unprecedented times we are getting unprecedented state intervention, by a Tory government of all things. We have never been prouder of the NHS, that symbol of democracy, which is getting symbolic support through weekly applause, if not practical and financial help. UK railways have been part nationalised under emergency powers. Supermarket trips involve lengthy queues and a limit on the number of items that can be bought. Financial aid is akin to a Universal Basic Income. Even in 1948 Beveridge could not have foreseen this.
But witty and erudite Stuart Maconie wrote his love letter to the welfare state long before coronavirus hit the world. The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It sees Maconie tell Britain’s Welfare State story through his own history of growing up as a northern working class boy. He champions building a fairer and more just society that looks beyond profit and loss, and takes care of its fellow citizens.
He visits hospitals and doctors surgeries, and hears how increasing bureaucracy is stopping them care for patients. He goes to old factory towns and learns how life stopped once the doors were shut for the final times. He revisits his old schools, which includes a grammar school, and explores whether they were really a leg up for poorer schools, or just added elitism. And, man after my own heart, he spends time in the library, that bastion of educational and cultural democracy.
When I do those ‘where do you fall on the political spectrum?’ quizzes I come out more left than Lenin. Yet I wasn’t convinced by Maconie, love him though I do. It’s all too easy to romanticise the past, believe that we can return to fairer days. The welfare state needs a big overhaul. He’s right about that. And I like that he comes at this from an ideological point of view – like, let’s just all look out for each other. That’s how we should approach all policy making – from a place of heart and feeling, followed up by the practicalities. If only it was that simple.