Why interns don’t deserve pay

In the modern political firmament, is there any creature more ridiculous than the agitating intern? Interns are rising up. These one-time coffee-makers have reimagined themselves as history-makers, fancying that they are latter-day Wilberforces striking a blow against the ‘internship slave trade’. They’re demanding back pay, retrospective remuneration for all that hard graft in air-conditioned offices with nothing but a usually paid-for Pret sandwich to sustain them.

Groups such as Intern Aware, Internocracy and Interns Anonymous are rebelling against the ‘tyranny’ of unpaid or expenses-only internships. It’s naked exploitation to be asked to work for nowt, they claim. It’s ‘modern-day slavery’, says the website of Interns Anonymous, driving the point home with a picture of a Roman slave fanning his pampered mistress. That’s just what life is like for the 21st-century intern, apparently, though presumably without the being-sold-at-public-auction bit or the threat of being fed to lions.