A decade ago, the banks and their powerful allies tipped much of the western world into crisis. They were never going to pay for it: in Britain, a Conservative party they kept financially afloat has made sure of it. The richest 1,000 families resident in Britain – bankers and financiers among them – have more than doubled their net worth during an era of austerity and stagnating living standards. Instead, the crisis would be paid for with the future of an entire generation, not least youngsters from working-class backgrounds. Last week the BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil tweeted that he’d “treat people who want to start class war as same as race war”, in effect comparing leftists who believe in challenging gross disparities of wealth and power with white supremacists. But as the billionaire Warren Buffett put it: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

This is vandalism. It inflicts damage not just on the young people directly affected, but on the nation’s future

Here’s a striking case in point: 15% of pupils in England – about 1.2 million children – have some form of special educational need or disability (SEND). As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out, poverty is both a cause and effect of special educational needs: not only is there is a direct correlation between SEND and growing up in poverty, but those with special needs are less likely to “leave school with outcomes that reduce chances of living in poverty as adults”. Furthermore, if you’re a kid with special needs growing up in poverty, you are less likely to get the support you need.

Consider, then, a damning new report by Ofsted, which finds that provision for SEND pupils is “disjointed and inconsistent”. As it is, just 253,000 of these 1.2 million pupils have care plans – a legal document that outlines the support they need – or special educational needs statements. According to the regulator, 2,000 of the neediest children who have care plans are still awaiting provision – three times more than in 2010.

The scale of the crisis, and what it means for some of the country’s most vulnerable children, is worth contemplating. Austerity-ravaged local councils have been forced to overspend to support them: spending on SEND services has trebled in the last three years. That, in turn, has forced councils to raid the overall schools budget. That support is being unjustly withheld is illustrated by the fact that, in nearly 90% of cases, parents who take their case to tribunal get the decision overturned. But as well as the stress placed on those families, what of those who don’t have the confidence to conduct such appeals?

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It has to be placed in a broader context: real per-pupil spending in English schools has fallen by 8% since 2010. One all too little discussed scandal has been a reduction in funding for sixth formers of more than a fifth.

This is vandalism. It inflicts damage not just on the young people directly affected but on the nation’s future. Think of the unnecessary poverty created later in life by the failure to offer support to struggling pupils. It’s a false economy, too: the state will have to spend more, later, to support those let down at school. But it is more profound than that: think of the lost talents that would otherwise have enriched our society and culture.

The children of the most privileged will be fine, of course, not least the top 7% sent to private schools. Those in comfortable, rather than overcrowded houses; who have good diets; who don’t suffer the stress of poverty when young; who have the “cultural capital” of university-educated parents – they will generally continue to realise their potential. So the bankers who threw Britain into crisis, and then kept their shiny limousines, multiple homes and luxury holidays, will have forced other people’s children to pay for what they did, not their own.

And how about this for grotesque: while cutting support for struggling pupils the Tories have bunged a £50m bonus to 16 grammar schools, to create new places – ostensibly only to those with a plan to improve access for disadvantaged children. But bear in mind that less than 3% of grammar school pupils are eligible for free school meals, compared with 14% across the state sector.

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Consider the full gamut of this government’s impact on young people. The scrapping of the educational maintenance allowance, a small amount of money to support aspirational young working-class people, and the trebling of university fees. The decimation of youth services: in London alone, 81 youth clubs and council youth projects have been cut since 2011, and a real-terms cut on children and youth services of nearly a billion pounds in just six years. A generation driven into an unregulated, rip-off private rental sector, lacking basic security, dependent on their landlords’ whims. The explosion of insecure jobs, at a time when living standards for young people have fallen most steeply. It is a list as incriminating as it is long.

It has become almost a cliche that Brexit sucks the oxygen out of the political conversation, depriving growing social crises of the attention they need. The irony is that many of the injustices that helped fuel the Brexit vote in the first place have been even more ignored since, despite the pathetically empty promise by Theresa May at the start of her term in office to cure the “burning injustices” in modern society.

At the fag-end of the last Tory government in 1997, Britain was a creaking mess, with leaking school roofs and a crumbling health service. The Labour government’s consequent investment was necessary, albeit undermined by marketisation and privatisation. In ending a class war that has left Britain’s social infrastructure crumbling, the next Labour government will have to be far more radical in reversing the damage. For all too many, it will be too late.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist