“In years to come, I believe people will be asking how it was that government walked by on the other side when thousands of children were suffering abject deprivation, and failed to support them in their hours of need,” he said.
He described the poverty he had witnessed in his home town of Kirkcaldy, where 70% of children were in poverty in some neighbourhoods, as the worst he had seen in his lifetime.
“In 2010, we were helping 100 children at Christmas [through charity schemes]. Last Christmas, it was 1,800,” he said.
Millions of people have spent the last 25 years wondering how on earth New Labour managed to do so little when they had the chance. Blair’s first Commons rebellion was over reducing benefits for single parents. Good intentions and caring words are not enough, you need a fucking spine. The current situation owes as much to New Labour’s failure to meaningfully reverse any aspect of Thatcherism, and both New and current Labour’s terror of the right-wing media, as it does to the Tory psychopaths.
It needs saying but Brown needs to 'fess up to his failings when in power if he wants to say it with any credibility.