From Food Banks to Multibanks

A sign of the UK's relentless decline

Published in The National, November 20th, 2024.

It’s a truism that a society that beggars its children beggars its future, yet successive UK governments have done just that. The Guardian reported yesterday that 1 in 3 children and a quarter of all adults in the UK live in poverty.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/18/more-than-one-in-three-uk-children-poverty-deprivation-record-high

The future of a child growing up in poverty is grim. They’re more likely to end up in care, commit crimes, and abuse drugs. They will experience poor mental and physical health, earn less, and achieve below their potential, compared to their more affluent peers.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimates that child poverty cost the UK £39 billion in 2023 but suspects the true figure could be substantially higher.

Let’s lay the blame where it belongs - on the UK government. It not only imposed years of needless austerity, slashing benefits and starving public services of resources, but it also sold off public assets and infrastructure, driving up their costs and reducing their effectiveness. Leaving the Single Market didn’t help, either.

Scotland’s poverty rate is below that of England and Wales largely because the Scottish administration has mitigated the worst of government policies. But that’s cold comfort to the 30% of Scottish children who are deprived of life’s essentials.

https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/SMC-2024-Report-Web-Hi-Res.pdf

Which brings me to Multibanks, the brainchild of Gordon Brown. Remember him? He’s the one who told us on the eve of the 2014 referendum that staying in the UK would guarantee a more just society, in particular for our children:

Now, tomorrow, the vote I will cast is not for me. It is for my children. It is for all of Scotland’s children. It is for our children’s future.

Here’s how that’s worked out:

Brown’s solution is to team up with Jeff Bezos’ Amazon to set up and supply Multibanks, warehouses where the poor can queue up for items that are surplus to Amazon’s requirements.

https://themultibank.co.uk

In the run-up to Christmas, Brown enlisted Scottish actor Peter Capaldi to do an ad where he begs the public for donations for these Victorian behemoths that further stigmatise the poor and do nothing to address the reasons people are in poverty. It was showing at my local cinema last week.

He says “there’s no quick fix to poverty.” Yes, there is. It’s called government.

But along with his LINO (Labour in Name Only) compatriots Starmer and Reeves, Brown no longer believes it is government’s responsibility to ensure people have the means to live decent lives without having to resort to a food or Multibank to survive.

An independent Scotland would be able to give every child what they need - not just to survive but to thrive. The status quo isn’t working for Scotland - especially not for our children. While we remain in the failing UK, we are impoverishing their future. And that’s criminal.