The EconomistJuly 13th 2019 Britain 532
1self from his views. Mrs May insisted she
had “full faith” in Sir Kim. In a televised de-
bate on July 9th between the two rivals to
succeed her, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign sec-
retary, said that as prime minister he would
keep Sir Kim in his job until he was due to
retire at the end of the year. But Mr John-
son, supposedly the champion of taking
back control, avoided any such commit-
ment, instead saying meekly that the rela-
tionship with America was of “fantastic
importance”. This was enough to persuade
Sir Kim he could not stay.
Mr Johnson “has basically thrown our
top diplomat under the bus”, said Sir Alan
Duncan, a Foreign Office minister. Sir John
Major, a former prime minister, warned Mr
Johnson that loyalty to civil servants was a
“two-way street”. Meanwhile Sir Simon Mc-
Donald, the Foreign Office’s top civil ser-
vant, told a committee of mps that more
leaks might follow. “The basis on which we
have worked all our careers suddenly feels
challenged,” he said.
The strain on Britain’s relationship with
one superpower comes as its supposed
“golden era” in relations with another, Chi-
na, is looking tarnished. Tensions over
pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong
Kong are the latest in a series that includes
policies towards Huawei and maritime
rights in the South China Sea.
Britain is also at loggerheads with Iran.
On July 4th it seized a tanker off Gibraltar
that it suspected of smuggling Iranian oil
to Syria, provoking threats of retaliation.
Sure enough, a week later three Iranian
vessels tried to impede a British tanker as it
sailed out of the Gulf, before the Royal
Navy’s HMSMontrosedrove them away.
The contrast with France is striking. As
Britain waits by the eu’s exit door and fo-
cuses on its leadership contest, President
Emmanuel Macron has not been idle. He
largely got his way in the recent share-out
of top eujobs. And on July 6th he agreed
with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, on
conditions for talks to save the nuclear deal
of 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (jcpoa). Britain’s Foreign Office
merely says it is “co-ordinating with other
jcpoaparticipants regarding the next steps
under the terms of the deal”.
The trade secretary, Liam Fox, is meant
to be paving the way for a future deal with
America, but in Washington this week he
had a front-seat view of how fraught han-
dling this administration might be. Rolling
out the red carpet for Mr Trump in London
last month did not change that (just as Sir
Kim predicted). Nor would having a Brexi-
teer as the next ambassador. The eu, mean-
while, has been busy doing actual trade
deals: its pact with Japan came into force in
February and last month it reached agree-
ments with Mercosur, a big Latin American
trade club, and Vietnam. Global Britain has
a lot of catching up to do. 7“F
airness”, declaredGeorge Osborne,
the then chancellor, in 2012, is “about
being fair to the person who leaves home
every morning to go out to work and sees
their neighbour still asleep, living a life on
benefits.” Newspapers printed story after
story about welfare fraudsters pinching
from the public purse, from the woman
with two Samoyed dogs who collected
thousands of pounds a month and
claimed, “It’s not worth my while working,”
to the man who collected disability benefit
while competing in bodybuilding contests.
In 2014 one in ten Britons tuned in to
“Benefits Street”, a documentary which fea-
tured welfare recipients drinking and
fighting on rubbish-strewn streets.
Back then it felt impossible to be too
mean to benefit claimants. They were a po-
litical piñata: whack them and votes fell
out. When in 2013 the opposition Labour
Party opposed a bill that would have result-
ed in three years of real-terms benefit cuts,
the Conservatives responded with an ad-
vert that read: “Today Labour are voting to
increase benefits by more than workers’
wages.” In the run-up to the general elec-
tion in 2015, Mr Osborne promised £12bn
($18bn) of cuts to welfare. Voters rewarded
his party with a majority.
But the political piñata is no longer pay-
ing out. These days 56% of people think
that cutting benefits “would damage too
many people’s lives”—the highest figure
since 2001 (see chart). Fears about benefit
fiddling are at their lowest level in three de-
cades. Concern over the extent of poverty,
however, is rising, according to the latest
edition of the British Social Attitudes Sur-
vey, published on July 11th. Voters no longercomplainabout“scroungers” during focus
groups, say pollsters. tv programmes are
more likely to focus on the botched roll-out
of universal credit, a big welfare reform,
than they are on the undeserving poor.
Newspapers carry many fewer stories than
they used to about skivers (see chart), in-
stead running sympathetic profiles of peo-
ple forced to use food banks.
The shift has many causes. One is eco-
nomic. The working-age employment rate
has risen to an all-time high, so in Mr Os-
borne’s terms there are fewer people still
snoozing as their neighbours begin their
morning commute. Wages are also grow-
ing at their fastest rate since the financial
crisis of 2008-09. When people feel reason-
ably flush they may feel more generous to-
wards others.
But a strong labour market does not al-
ways translate into support for welfare. The
British economy boomed in 1997-2007,
when Tony Blair’s Labour government was
in charge, yet scepticism about welfare
rose during Mr Blair’s second and third
terms. What other factors are at play?
Policy is one. The Tories, who came toBritish attitudes to welfare have
undergone a quiet revolutionThe politics of welfareMoving out of
Benefits Street
Cut the cutsSources:NatCen;Factiva *NationalandselectedregionaltitlesBritainNumberofphrasesrelatedtowelfare
fraudandabuseinnewspapers*Welfare benefits,%agreeing3540455055602001 05 10 15 17Too generousCuts would damage
too many people’s lives
02004006008002000 05 10 15 18A bank worth bailing out