Political theories of poverty vary across the political spectrum, with those on the right tending to individualise social problems more generally, and those on the left tending to socialise them. Very different policy implications stem from each perspective.
Since the Thatcher era, the new right have developed a distinctive behaviourist approach to poverty, founded on the idea that poor people are poor because they lack certain qualities and traits. In 2013, Iain Duncan Smith worked on developing “better measures of child poverty” to provide a “more accurate reflection of the reality of child poverty.”
According to the Conservatives, poverty isn’t caused by a lack of income. The Coalition conducted a perfunctory consultation at the time that did little more than provide a Conservative ideological framework to catch carefully calculated, led and subliminally shaped public responses.
Iain Duncan Smith has indicated he will repeal the 2010 Child Poverty Act…
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BertieS 