Ross Clark Ross Clark

Savers are Britain’s new underclass

We are divided into two nations once more, says Ross Clark. Reckless borrowers are helped by government bail-outs, while those who have sacrificed to save are abandoned

issue 31 January 2009

While my remaining bank shares were plummeting last week I bought a copy of Socialist Worker to try to cheer myself up. At least somebody must be enjoying themselves, I reasoned, as I sat down to enjoy what I thought would be red-blooded demands for insurrection and the public execution of Sir Fred Goodwin. I cannot say how disappointed I was. I might just quote this less than revolutionary sentence from a leader:

At the very least, the government could insist on an end to the threat of repossession and debt collectors. Doing so would mean we would get something in return for billions of pounds of our money.

Could this be right: the vanguard of socialist thought demanding government support for the petty bourgeois in their struggle to keep up the mortgage repayments on their buy-to-lets? It was. The financial crisis, it would be easy to assume, ought to be springtime for revolutionary socialists.

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