The wave of solidarity sparked by this pandemic has been extraordinary, and the surge of support between generations particularly pronounced. Nearly four thousand mutual aid groups are organising community responses, with help necessarily flowing to older people facing higher risks from Covid-19.

As social feeling soars, the Social Market Foundation has published a report on ‘intergenerational fairness’ post-crisis. It employs the sharp rise in public sector borrowing to argue that older people should be the primary targets of an ‘Austerity Round Two,’ necessary to pay off the deficit. This is fair, they argue, because of the disproportionate impact of ‘Austerity Round One’ on the working-age population. 

The report prescribes a cut to the ‘triple lock’ on state pensions, a protection which guarantees their value will rise each year. This would raise £4bn annually towards the deficit and was also to be found in the leaked Treasury report which made Telegraph headlines this week.

Observer columnist and fairness enthusiast Will Hutton agrees, using his last column to argue that “the triple lock on pensioner incomes is unsupportable,” and should be cut back to prevent “unfairness [being] heaped upon unfairness.”

As debt from the crisis spirals these calls will grow, and the new Labour leadership will be pressed on whether it believes the books must be balanced, and how that should be achieved. The temptation to look through the prism of generational fairness will be strong.

After all, it’s true that working age people have borne the brunt of austerity over the last decade. The weight of suffering is uneven, and the scales could be balanced simply by stripping protections from older generations, with immediate benefits for the country’s finances. 

But this approach ignores every lesson of the recent round of austerity: We know that cuts to central government provision just push costs elsewhere, with severe social consequences. Reducing the incomes of older people will place additional pressure on local authorities, or our struggling health service, for example. More broadly, most economists now agree that starving our economy of demand prolonged the sluggish recovery from 2010. Why would we repeat this same mistake? 

Worse though is that these proposals do not respond to the epochal scale of this crisis. What the SMF and Hutton share with the architect of austerity, George Osborne (who is also calling for a “period of retrenchment”), is a limited view of the state’s capacity in this extraordinary moment. They believe its only role is to identify bloated spending to cut, and create a ‘level-playing field’ of diminished provision. In practice then, calls for ‘fairness’ obscure a return to the restrictive politics of ‘tough choices’ that dominated our discussions until 2015. 

Brexit has revealed the ambitions of those further to their right; they will use the high debt levels to justify a remodelling of our society. The Higher Education sector is already facing a £2.6bn shortfall in funding for example, with the potential for 30,000 job losses. This leaves it in the palm of one of the most right-wing cabinets in British history; politicians who feel a disproportionate irritation with supposedly left-wing university campuses. We can’t be certain that the wave of public support for our health workers will prevent further market reforms there too, under the public finance pressures. 

There is a lot at stake. The challenge for the Left is to assert a compelling alternative quickly. This should start from a renewed politics of intergenerational solidarity.

Before coronavirus, political divisions between generations had never felt wider. In his 2019 book Generation Left, the academic Keir Milburn described how “the emergence of age as the key indicator of voting intention in the UK has been sudden and emphatic.” This was clear from the EU referendum. But also in a sharp leftward turn by younger voters, mirrored in a regressive fiscal conservatism among older generations.

Both the Labour Party and the Democrats in the US have been routed at the ballot box by an older voting bloc, despite benefitting from an uptick in turnout among the young. On each side of the pond, progressive forces seem incapable of grasping office without building a broader coalition of generations.

The shared experience of pandemic could soften this polarisation, helping to refute the narrative of ‘entitled millenials’ used to justify our immiseration, while building a sense of collective solidarity beyond the family unit. According to the ONS, half of us have checked whether our neighbours need help over lockdown. Fifty-five percent now report “a sense of belonging with other residents in their local community,” and two-thirds believe they will be supported by others if in need. An astonishing shift in feeling among our deeply fractured islands. 

Yet the new Labour leadership has not engaged with this mutual aid movement, remaining tightly entangled in parliamentary process. Amplified into a national narrative of reciprocity by Labour, this unique experience of solidarity between generations could have formed the foundations of a lively electoral alliance. It still might.

For example, the SMF’s report doesn’t mention that the triple lock on state pensions (which they propose to cut back) actually benefits the young the most; who reap the cumulative benefit of state pension increases when they retire. Nor does it recognise that pensioner poverty remains a persistent problem, one which has got worse since 2010. 

A new politics of intergenerational solidarity would see the triple lock for what it is; an act of reciprocity from which all benefit, rather than the burden of one generation upon another.  Those seeking to build a society for the common good won’t gain from singling-out groups to pay the price of external shocks. This can only foster division. 

But what of the deficit? It’s unclear exactly how large the annual deficit will be once economic activity returns, but the OBR’s scenario appeared optimistic in modelling a rapid recovery. Either way government debt will be mountainous, at home and abroad. If the Left fails, it will be used to obstruct social progress for decades to come. 

Solidarity between generations points to the obvious alternative – our tax system. Why pursue this impoverished fairness when greater sums can be raised through taxation? Income tax is structured to be broadly progressive in the UK, but we are very soft on high-earners by historical standards. This should be adjusted to ensure those at the top pay more.

More pressing though is the taxation of wealth. Richard Murphy, a professor in political economy at City University, found that £174bn a year could be raised by taxing wealth the same as income – forty-four times the £4bn from unpicking the triple lock. These potential revenues have been ignored for too long, for narrow political gain. Significant sums are needed to defend public institutions, and rebuild society anew. This must now be confronted.

Such measures would of course raise revenues from asset-owning older generations, but based on their ability to contribute, not their age. And if Labour can link this explicitly to the immediate, lived experiences of mutual aid between generations, and to a defence of existing social protections for older people, perhaps a promising political settlement can follow. One that builds on the universalism of recent manifestos, rather than shrinks from it. 

Every part of the political spectrum will see this as a chance to remake the UK in its own image; the old adage of ‘never letting a crisis go to waste.’ But this crisis can only be overcome when those that can contribute more tax do so – regardless of the year they happen to have been born.