Why Aren’t We Outraged By Child Poverty In Brexit Britain?

Adebayo Adeniran
3 min readJun 18, 2024

Read on.

Nipan Chawchareprnon via Pexels

According to Phil Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty from 2014–2020, it is said that a fifth of our population in the United Kingdom live in poverty, with the number set to increase quite drastically.

It is pertinent to point out that the statement above was made in 2018, when we had a coalition government and Brexit hadn’t yet been enshrined in our nation’s laws.

Since then, so much has happened across the world, with the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, which hammered our economy quite badly.

And when Vladimir Putin decided to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine, what followed was the extraordinary plummeting of living standards with small energy companies which offered affordable electricity and heating costs falling by the wayside.

Elizabeth Truss, who was elected by rank and file Conservatives in September 2022, took no time in announcing tax cuts to the wealthiest and its effect was immediate with the rise in the mortgage rates and the decimation of our pensions.

All of these events have contrived to destroy the wellbeing of our young citizens in the United Kingdom with 4.3 million children living under poverty and it is just as bad if you’re white, black or brown.

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Adebayo Adeniran

A lifelong bibliophile, who seeks to unleash his energy on as many subjects as possible