Public finances are in a parlous state and people are baying for change. The Government is under intense pressure to reform public spending due to a combination of unmet need, workforce crises, and unstable financing. Yet we’re under the thumb of a Labour cabinet seemingly ambivalent about doing what a Labour cabinet should: namely, ensuring the system works for the many.

With Rachel Reeves’s upcoming Budget , I wanted to face an uncomfortable truth in modern Britain: systems once designed to support the most vulnerable and to liberate the masses from the deprivations of poverty are increasingly being used to prop many of us up. And they’re not even doing a good job of it.

My wife is an associate professor on a decent salary. I’m a novelist with a good side hustle in freelance journali

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