NO VACCINE will address the epidemic of poverty stalking Britain.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s finding that half a million children are living in destitution reflects yawning inequalities that predate coronavirus. The pandemic has made them worse. 

It is barely a week since the Legatum Institute found that an additional 700,000 people have been pushed into poverty since the virus struck.

People in the poorest areas of the country are more likely to contract Covid-19. Black people are twice as likely as white people. 

The Social Metric Commission has found that people already in the deepest forms of poverty were most likely to lose income, with two-thirds of those in deep poverty (whose household income is less than 50 per cent of the poverty line) having had a negative change to their employment status (whether that means having been laid off, furloughed, put on reduced hours or had their pay cut).

At the same time Covid-19 has been boom-time for the super-rich, with Swiss bank UBS finding that the world’s billionaires increased their wealth by over a quarter between April and July. 

The Gospels had it that “the man who has will be given more; from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Except that it is even more likely to be taken away from the woman who has not: women are more likely to have lost jobs or income than men both globally and in Britain.

We don’t need to invoke a perverse deity to understand why. 

Those in less secure work will see their hours and roles cut more easily. 

Key workers who are unable to work from home are disproportionately badly paid: more than 70 per cent of care workers earn less than the National Living Wage.

Women are more likely to work part-time than men and female labour is more concentrated in sectors that are either highly exposed to the virus (such as care work) or which have been devastated by lockdowns with inadequate state support (such as hospitality and retail).

Coronavirus has been compared to an X ray exposing the hidden structures of our society. We have seen whose work is most important, and how badly it is paid. We are seeing how precarious it is, from the worker with no sick pay unable to self-isolate to the giant company so hollowed out by dividends it cannot weather a bad season.

None of these issues will go away after the pandemic.

We need a mass movement that points to the underlying reasons for Britain’s extreme vulnerability to the pandemic and proposes long-term solutions. Yet we have a government and official opposition that only seek to erect scaffolding around a tottering model. 

The Tory Chancellor’s determination to impose real-terms cuts to public-sector pay and failure to act on mass unemployment will leave our society weaker, poorer and sicker even than it was already.

This means pressure needs to be mounted first of all beyond Parliament, by trade union and community campaigning. 

Immediate demands such as higher statutory sick pay and no cut to universal credit can be linked to a wealth tax, as implemented in Argentina to pay for immediate Covid relief measures. 

There are urgent grounds for action on jobs and benefits and there is every reason for the labour movement to frame these demands in class terms, pointing to the exploitative few who are making fortunes from the Tory response to the crisis, and demanding that they be made to foot the bill.

If the Labour Party leadership is engaged in a frenzied assault on its own members, that is only because the size and appeal of the socialist movement built up over the last five years still haunts the ruling class. 

We for our part must not forget that there is a mass audience for radical change.