Green shoots, and lack thereof

This week – so is £100,000 a lot of money or what? Also, the time some northerners nearly went to war over the date of Easter; and I get a bit ranty, sorry.

This week’s “political question that shouldn’t be difficult, and yet”: does £100,000 a year count as a high salary or not? 

Chancellor of the Exchequer¹ Jeremy Hunt – the man tasked, to the extent anyone is, with management of the British economy – apparently thinks it is not. In a tweet sent as part of his other role, as MP for South West Surrey, he claimed to have spoken to a woman who was upset that the government’s childcare support policies didn’t extend to those earning over that threshold. “That is an issue I would really like to sort out after the next election,” he added, optimistically imagining that either he or his party will then be continuing to trouble us, “as I am aware that it is not a huge salary in our area if you have a mortgage to pay.”

Look how seriously he takes the worries of high earners! Image: the artist formerly known as Twitter.

Cue several days of outrage, because to most people in this country, yes £100,000 is an enormous salary. The median full-time salary in the UK is somewhere around £35,000; a salary of £100,000 puts you in the top 1% of the distribution. It is, objectively, a lot of money; and having spent some time in 2003 working for Hunt’s company Hotcourses, at which a small army of people were expected to get by in London on under £15,000, I can attest that this is a belief the chancellor himself once clearly shared.

So yes, if you look at actual money paid to actual employees in the actually existing British economy, Hunt is objectively wrong. But there are other ways of looking at this, in which things are not quite so clear cut. Fairly average family homes in Godalming, the largest town in his constituency, are currently selling for upwards of half a million: even before mortgage rates spiked, buying one of those would require you to have a household income of £100,000, a significant chunk of family help, or both. That’s before childcare costs, now so extortionate that they’re frequently compared to another mortgage.

A chart from the Resolution Foundation to back up my next assertion.

By the same token, if wages had continued growing since 2010 as they had for decades before it, they’d now be approaching the £50,000 mark. If the UK economy had followed the trajectory of the US, which one might argue it should have done, then £100,000 would be a high but no longer exceptional salary. And of course inflation has eroded living standards for everyone. Higher earners may start from a better place – a much better one – but they still face costs and expenses, and their living standards too have taken a sizable hit these last few years. 

So while £100,000 a year is objectively a great salary, it’s a damn sight worse than it used to be: that arguably makes it even harder to justify the fact that, because it’s the level at which assorted allowances and entitlements start to be withdrawn, you can be better off earning £99,000 than significantly higher. All this, one assumes, is the point Hunt was trying to make: he’s acknowledging the problems faced by people who should be voting Tory but, increasingly and for entirely rational reasons, are not.

The problem with this argument, though, is that everything that might give his ludicrous claim any credibility at all has happened entirely under his government. The Tories have presided over soaring childcare costs, spiralling housing costs, poor wage growth, a cost of living crisis, and a tax system full of distortions to boot. There is no one person to blame for the fact that, in Surrey, £100,000 a year might be “not a huge salary... if you have a mortgage to pay”. But if there were, it would be Jeremy Hunt. 

The problem with the chancellor’s comments is not merely that it makes him look out of touch. It’s that he’s the representative of the people who created this mess. And now it’s his job to fix it. 

The inevitable “I have a book out” bit, which you’re all, by now, skipping over

It’s now just four weeks until my book magically appears in bookshops – or, if you’ve been smart enough to pre-order, in your very own house! Here’s what my lovely Paper Cuts colleague Miranda Sawyer had to say about it:

Somehow, Jonn Elledge turns geo-political history into a funny, fascinating and revealing insight not only into the world today but into the frailty and determination of the human spirit. Packed with “I never knew that” information (the sort that you read out to anyone in the room with you), A History Of The World In 47 Borders shows us that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it plays out in weird ways right under our noses. He’s such a lovely writer. A delight from start to finish.

I have it on good authority that it’s good, even if you aren’t one of my mates, too! Pre-order here, it really helps persuade shops to stock it.

664AD, when the north of England nearly went to war over the date of Easter

York vs Lancaster, leave vs remain, Oasis vs Blur – the history of these islands is a history of unbridgeable political divides. The bout of factionalism that perhaps looks weirdest to modern eyes, though, may be the one which split an Anglo-Saxon royal family down the middle and may have brought their kingdom to the brink of civil war. It was a row over when to celebrate Easter. 

Northumbria, c700. Image: Hogweard/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0..