The sickness benefit trap

Now that I’m no longer editor of this magazine, I can admit that I spent the election night of 1997 cheering on Tony Blair. Reader, it gets worse. I didn’t particularly want a Labour government but I badly wanted the devolution they had promised. A parliament in Edinburgh would, I thought, consider why the East End of Glasgow – home to many of my extended family – had some of the worst deprivation in Europe. Drugs deaths, unemployment, crime, all ignored by Westminster, would surely be remedied by the new politicians in Holyrood.

How naive that was. Scotland’s drug-death toll has since risen fivefold and the welfare situation has worsened. Grimsby, Birkenhead, Blackpool and the Wirral have all followed the trail blazed by Glasgow.

My time as a political journalist has helped me understand why.