The politics of drinking
            April 25, 2011

Drunks, junkies and fatsos: the return of the 
undeserving poor

David Cameron stepped up last week to slap us when we’re down, saying people who are sick because they drink too much, eat too much or take the wrong sort of drugs shouldn’t get incapacity benefit because it’s all their fault.

The BBC’s home editor Mark Easton was quick to pull apart the argument in his blog. For one thing the statistic the prime minister was upset about, that 80,000 addicts are on benefit, actually tells us that these kind of claimants are reducing in number.

For another thing, Easton asks, where do you draw the line when it comes to fault? How about the person who climbs on a horse, fully aware this is a dangerous thing to do, falls off and is unable to work through injury. Isn’t that their fault? Shouldn’t they be denied incapacity benefit too?

All this is enough to wreck this modern version of the Victorian notion of the undeserving poor. But there’s a further point that can be made to expose the fact that Cameron’s target is not merely the undeserving but poor people in general. Because it’s not just how much you drink or drug or eat that determines whether it makes you ill, it’s how much money you’ve got.

As I keep saying,  if you’re among the most deprived fifth of the population you’re six times more likely to die an alcohol-related death than if you’re among the least deprived fifth. Even though, as a whole, this poorest segment of the population drinks less than the richest.

In his autobiography last year Keith Richards said he’d survived so long because he was wealthy enough to afford high quality drugs

When it comes to food, too, research suggests that while obesity is no more prevalent among the poor than the rich, the health problems associated with being fat are suffered disproportionately by people who experience greater deprivation.

Of course, Cameron has no desire to tackle the structural inequalities that underlie addiction and obesity. So instead, as the privileged have always done, he blames what is essentially a moral lack.

But it’s not will power that’s lacking among the undeserving poor, it’s political power, the power to improve their lives.

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