SARAH VINE: This mum is making the equivalent of a £113k salary through benefits. The system's broken... and her story shows so clearly where the blame lies
When I was a child there was a saying, now no longer very much in vogue: cut your coat to suit your cloth. In other words, live life according to what you can afford – even if that means making sacrifices.
My grandmother, like many of her generation, exemplified this attitude. She and my grandfather had travelled the world while he was in the Army, but retirement was a modest two-up, two-down in Bickley, south-east London. Despite a lifetime spent in service of his country, my grandfather's Army pension didn't stretch far.
She sliced their bread paper thin and drank Camp Coffee. When she came to visit us in Italy, she travelled two days by coach over the Alps from Victoria Bus Station. On the rare occasions she did treat herself to something new, she would carefully save the receipt in case she needed to return it and get the money back. Which she sometimes did.
These were not privations – like many people of their generation my grandparents would never have thought of themselves as badly off. But they did have to manage on what they had. They would certainly never have dreamed of claiming state handouts unless in absolute dire straits.
Those days are gone. People aren't like that any more. We live in a something-for-nothing culture where everyone wants what they can't afford. People aren't just happy to get the state to pay for them – they feel entitled, too.
And they get it. Your average illegal immigrant probably enjoys more perks than my grandparents ever had, what with the four-star hotel accommodation, access to private GPs and extradition bonuses.
But it's not just newcomers; everyone is on the take. The old-fashioned values of pride and self-respect that kept people like my grandparents from overburdening the state are long gone. They who gave so much actually took very little. The opposite is now true.
Many who have never contributed so much as a bead of sweat to this country – let alone fought for it – have no shame in taking what the Government, in its pusillanimous desperation to lock in votes, has to offer.
Thea Jaffe, a single mother of three, earns around £2,800 a month from her job and also rakes in approximately £3,340 in welfare payments, giving her a total income of just over £6,000 a month
Thea's job puts her in the top 25 per cent of earners in the country - yet she claims the same again, and some, in benefits, writes Sarah Vine
It's their right, their entitlement, because they are worth it. They apply the same principle to their children. Only the best for little Johnny, even though he's a snotty-nosed brat who could do with a clip around the ear. Ditto their little princess. What, no iPhone 17 or the latest Xbox at Christmas? That's practically child abuse these days.
And now, thanks to this Government, they can have it all - at the taxpayers' expense. My grandmother would have been mortified to claim even a single penny from the state, yet in today's world, you would be a fool not to. Why stand on principle when it's there for the taking? Why prune back your lifestyle when Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have found the magic money tree and it's finally bearing fruit?
A case in point: Thea Jaffe, a single mother of three children who as well as earning around £2,800 a month from her job as a 'strategic partnerships leader in intercultural and language solutions' (whatever that means) also rakes in approximately £3,340 in welfare payments, giving her a total income of just over £6,000 a month.
Let's stop to think about that for a moment. Her job puts her in the top 25 per cent of earners in the country - yet she claims the same again, and some, in benefits.
To get that kind of take-home pay without handouts, you would have to be earning around £113,000 a year. One doesn't tend to think of people on benefits earning the equivalent of a six-figure salary, yet apparently Ms Jaffe is.
Hers is a situation many people will, understandably, find both baffling and infuriating. Not to mention very unfair.
It's important to note that Jaffe herself (who has been a vocal campaigner for the removal of the two-child benefit cap) hasn't done anything wrong; she is merely taking advantage of a set of government policies and a tax and welfare structure that allows her to live well beyond her means using taxpayer money.
Still, at the end of the day she is taking home considerably more than an MP (£94,000 a year) or a GP (£73-96,000 a year, according to the latest figures). A junior doctor earns around £37,000 a year. Even the Prime Minister himself only gets about £50,000 more than Ms Jaffe.
By any sensible or sane standard, her situation is wrong. Not just from a moral standpoint, but also from a purely practical one. Such a system is surely unsustainable. It shows that there is something fundamentally broken about the way these benefits are being allocated.
We are told, for example, that one of the reasons she gets so much is because she lives in London, where rent and childcare costs are, admittedly, eye-wateringly expensive.
But then again, that is a choice. Her choice, in fact. She pays £2,000 a month in rent, £3,000 in childcare costs. So why live in London? Don't they have jobs for 'strategic partnerships leader in intercultural and language solutions' in other, less expensive parts of the country?
Perhaps she's in London because that's where her children's father lives. In which case is fair enough – but why can't he contribute to their upbringing? (He apparently does not.)
As for childcare costs, we've all been there. When my two were small almost all my salary went on the cost of childcare – it's just the nature of the beast. And because I earned more than £60,000 at the time, I was ineligible for child benefits. But these are things you must plan for in life. You can't just go ahead anyway and expect someone else to pick up the tab.
In her defence, Ms Jaffe argues that the problem is not families like hers, but the fact that someone in the top 25 per cent of earners can't afford a decent standard of living. She's right about that, but what she forgets to mention is that the same applies to everyone. And yet there are plenty who receive no help at all for the simple reason that they don't tick the right boxes. Why should they be forced to make sacrifices to pay for people like Jaffe and their life choices?
Who wouldn't be ashamed of taking so much? Instead, she's broadcasting it to everyone. Same online: social media is full of benefit claimants boasting about how much fun they're having loafing around all day and ordering takeaways at the taxpayers' expense – while topping up their earnings as 'content creators'. Sure, a fair few of them are just wind-ups. But there are plenty who are not. And, like Jaffe, they have no shame. On the contrary: they consider themselves heroes.
This represents a fundamental cultural shift that has been slowly taking place for a long time, but which under this Government has finally locked into place. Reversing it will not just require a change in policy but also a fundamental shift in attitudes – something that might now be impossible. The handout culture might simply be too deeply embedded.
I hope not. Yes, governments need to make work pay, but they also need to make it clear to people that the welfare state is not a lifestyle choice. It should be there as a crutch to help people get back on their feet or support them through a rough patch. It's not something you should plan your life around, as Ms Jaffe seems to have done.
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