Working from home is welfarism for the middle class

Not since the 2024 UK General Election campaign has the hard slap of paternalism been met with such dismay. Back then, the Conservatives called for ‘mandatory national service for all school leavers at 18’ (it’s right there on page four of their manifesto). This time, it was Reform UK leader Nigel Farage condemning ‘hybrid-working practices’ – specifically the part where you are allowed to do your job from home – that caused an outcry.

At the beginning of the week, Farage said Britain needs ‘an attitudinal change’ to work. ‘Attitudinal change to the idea of working from home. People aren’t more productive working at home – it’s a load of nonsense. They’re more productive being with other fellow human beings and working as part of a team’, he said.

It may have otherwise been a sidenote in a rally in which the main purpose was to declare that Reform is on an election ‘war footing’, but Farage really believes in ending working from home. Last year, he told council workers in Reform-led local authorities that ‘you either work from the office or you’re gone’. Since Farage is far more likely to form the next government than the Conservatives were after the 2024 election, it’s an important statement. He has the support of senior bosses, too, such as the former Marks and Spencer chief executive and Asda chairman, Lord Stuart Rose, who previously said that remote working is not ‘proper work’.

Unsurprisingly Farage’s speech was instantly condemned as divisive ‘boomerslop’ – viral content cynically targeted at the older generation, including retirees, who are heavy social-media users. With this demographic, compulsory national service always polled well, too.

Nor did the criticism of Farage only come from the usual, Guardian-adjacent suspects. ‘This is nothing more than updated Tebbitism: get off your Peloton and go to work’, wrote Stephen Daisley, in an eloquent defence of hybrid working for the Spectator. ‘A generation never given the option begrudges its children’s good fortune.’

The number of people allowed to work from home doubled during the Covid lockdowns to more than eight million. It became acceptable: more than a quarter of the working population were hybrid working when the Office for National Statistics looked at the workforce data last year. As Daisley pointed out, it’s now the expectation for many professionals, particularly those with children. This does not mean Farage is wrong, of course, merely that he is being politically unwise. But these are murky waters, full of powerful undercurrents ready to drown the naïve paddler.

For a start, the accusation of generational warfare inferred by Farage’s critics (‘boomerslop’) is reciprocated in spades. And Farage didn’t even start it. The policy and media cadres in SW1 are fond of referring to Britain as a gerontocracy – a ‘tyranny’ of pensioners, even. This dissatisfaction is expressed in the Nicolas, 30 ans meme. Here, a (mythical) hard-working millennial professional sees his taxes go on welfare payments while retirees head for a cruise. He spends most of his money to rent a shared flat with three other 30-year-olds, accepts that he will never own a home, and doubts that he will ever see his pension.

Of course, you could also say that what this meme really represents is the generation of millennials who resent the good fortune of their Boomer parents and grandparents, just because they were once able to afford a property on a modest London wage, and now appear to be enjoying a comfortable retirement. See how making blanket assumptions based on age works both ways?

Whoever uses it, introducing intergenerational conflict into our debates is lazy and facile, and reveals a striking lack of political imagination. Nor is it even accurate. There are very many poor pensioners. There are also many complacent and feckless Nicks. Some of them, as the J’accuse Substack explains, may well be just as dependent on the state for their income as any welfare ‘scrounger’. A staggeringly large proportion of young professionals either work for the government directly or for a corporate giant that would collapse without government contracts.

That working from home is now an expected entitlement is the result of a changing business culture and company structures. In FTSE 100 companies, you will find tiers of well paid employees who are not exactly stretched to breaking point, some preoccupied by what David Graeber called ‘bullshit jobs’ or what the sociologist Roland Paulsen called ‘empty labour’. Examples can be seen in the ever-burgeoning human-resources departments. This growth of non-jobs and sinecures has wiped out the gains expected from productivity improvements and the adoption of new technologies. What’s more, as long as CEOs equate prestige with head count, these jobs look impervious to technological changes such as AI.

It was the management and executive class who revelled in the opportunity to work from home when lockdowns were declared in 2020 – and who were the biggest beneficiaries. They appreciate it the most, too. It is the ‘most educated and highly paid workers [who] are more likely to be hybrid working, while younger and older workers and those who live in deprived areas are less likely to do so’, The Times reported last year. Thanks to the BBC, we learn that bookings for golf courses have risen by 350 per cent during the work week since the pandemic. No prizes for guessing why.

It’s a different picture in other parts of the economy and for people on lower incomes. For retail staff, for logistics employees such as truckers, and for field workers such as telecoms engineers, WFH is an unimaginable perk, one that is simply not available.

So yes, working from home is a much more complicated subject than the Reform leader assumed. Farage may have been confident he was aligning himself with the tough bosses of hard-working Britain. But it just so happens that many of those bosses like playing golf and working from the countryside. As for the rest of the population, Farage has inadvertently risked opening a Pandora’s box. We might soon ask whether most work we do is even worth doing at all.

Andrew Orlowski is a weekly columnist at the Telegraph. Visit his website here. Follow him on X: @AndrewOrlowski.