Let me give you a hypothetical scenario to mull over. Should the worst happen – you lose your job, say, or become very ill or disabled, or the main breadwinner in your family leaves or dies – how long would it take for you or your family to become reliant on assistance from the state? I ask not just as a seasoned catastrophist (though I probably spend more time worrying about this sort of thing than I should) but because, unless you have found yourself in similar circumstances, you may not have thought about it.

Research from Shelter published today found that one in three working families in England are a monthly pay packet away from losing their homes. Perhaps you’re one of those people living pay cheque to pay cheque, stretched to breaking point. Perhaps your lack of savings means you lie awake at night, hyperventilating with the horror of what losing your job might mean. Government figures show that there are 16.5 million working-age adults in the UK with no savings at all.

One in three families are a month's pay from losing homes, says study Read more

It all chimes with the “deadline to the breadline” campaign, which two years ago found that on average people in the UK would be on the breadline in 29 days if their income stopped. Even more alarmingly, this fell to 14 days for working-age families.

We are told that those who claim benefits are somehow other. Only a certain sort of person, and certain sorts of families, are dependent on help from the state. Not us, them. And it must be because of something they did. It’s not because of preposterously high housing costs, or low-paid and insecure employment, or a cost of living crisis, it’s because they are feckless, and lazy, and thick. It’s not the sort of thing that could happen to us.

Except it clearly is. And it’s time that we not only start admitting this, but also have a serious discussion about what needs to be done about it. A system with such a high percentage of working poor is not healthy. This should not be a “secret shame”, it should be publicly – and furiously – aired. Part of the problem is the fact that concerns like this are not spoken of in “polite company”, because those who are struggling don’t want to be seen as “that sort” of person. Well, here’s a newsflash for you: poverty is not polite.

The welfare state saved me. To need it isn’t a moral failure | Lola Okolosie Read more

And yet, the shame thing; that’s a point of view with which I have a lot of sympathy. Whenever I read a study or a column in which the proportion of children on free school meals is used as a marker of deprivation, I feel a bristle of annoyance – “that’s not me, don’t make me a statistic. I am more than that”. A while back, posters and T-shirts that read “Product of the welfare state” were being touted around, particularly by people a generation or two older than mine – no doubt in response to what must go down in history as one of the most repulsive and cynical newspaper front pages of all time. The attempt to reclaim the phrase made me feel strangely conflicted. “How can they feel proud about that,” I wondered, “when I feel embarrassed?”

And there’s the rub. Those who are older might remember the pride that Britain took in its welfare state. My generation do not. The Tories and the rightwing press have succeeded in undermining the universal “safety net” ideology that underpinned the rationale for the welfare state’s existence to such an extent that it will become almost forgotten unless the conversation is shifted now. Labour should be the one to do that shifting, but instead it is mired in infighting. There is a widespread belief that in order to win votes, Labour needed to buy into the austerity narrative, and be “tough” on benefit claimants. But I wonder how many people heard Rachel Reeves say last year that Labour was “not the party of people on benefits” and felt firstly, “well, that could be me”, and secondly, that after years of neoliberal pussyfooting around the issue of working poverty, Labour desperately required a shift in emphasis. I certainly did.

I know we’re all supposed to be a bunch of privileged neo-Trots blinded by idealism and cult ideology, but believe it or not, you meet a lot of skint people at anti-austerity protests and Corbyn rallies. Many of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters have been on benefits. To echo another Guardian writer this morning, my mum is one of them.

A third of working families in England; that’s an awful lot of people who need Labour’s help. The way to galvanise them is to make them angry, not ashamed. We need to emphasise the importance of what we are losing. How the welfare state has, in a few generations, become something to be destroyed and dismantled. But look how many people still need it. Look how many of us – whether through free school meals, healthcare, eye tests, schooling, library books, milk, housing benefit, child benefit, working tax credits, ESA, dentistry, carer’s allowance, citizen’s advice, legal aid, state pension, winter fuel allowance, maintenance grants, DLA, maternity and paternity pay – are products of it. One in three are close to being dependent on it. It’s shameful; but these people are not the ones who should be feeling ashamed.