How a Labour MP went to war with me over the F-word
The response to my call for a family wage showed how some sections of the left have lost the plot

I am occasionally asked, usually by those who have read my book Despised or some of my other writings, if there was a particular moment in time when I realised that the mainstream left had taken leave of its senses and abandoned its historical mission to speak for Britain’s working class.
While it would be an exaggeration to say there was a single incident that caused the scales to fall from my eyes, there was certainly one that came close. It occurred on 4 September 2021 during a direct exchange I had with someone who was then a senior figure in the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and is now a Labour member of parliament.
I’ll come to all that in a moment. But, for context, I should explain that I have long been a proponent of the ‘family wage’ – a concept built around the principle that full-time workers should be paid a wage sufficient to raise a family. For many families these days, such a scenario is a pipe dream: more often than not, both parents – assuming they are together – are compelled by financial necessity to go out to work. Doubtless some couples would choose this path even in the absence of financial imperative – that is entirely their right, of course – but in most cases, I suspect, both parents work because there is no realistic alternative.
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