Coronavirus: Ministers’ slow action could cost the Conservatives votes for years to come

Those commonly bagged together as the “self-employed” are best characterised by their “extreme heterogeneity”, according to the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE). This makes sense when you stop to think that they range from television personalities and Premier League footballers through IT experts, barristers, plumbers, hairdressers and taxi drivers all the way to those involved in the “gig economy”. There is a huge range of patterns of work among the group, and indeed incomes and ambitions.

They are numbered at five million, and one million of them may soon find themselves unemployed, such is the precarious nature of some of their businesses. They have no employer to fall back on and they do not have the same access to the welfare safety net. And yet their sectors often involve close contact with the public who have been hammered by the coronavirus crisis.

During the emergency they have been disturbed, to put it mildly, that the government has generously met the needs of employees first. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has now arrived with a support package; but for some it will already be too little too late, and their resentment may be long-lasting. For some, the work of decades, even generations, will be demolished in weeks.

Despite their heterogeneity, many are natural Conservative supporters. Or should be. They epitomise the Tory ideals of entrepreneurship, of self-reliance, risk taking and hard work. The English, as Napoleon noted, are supposed to be a nation of shopkeepers (pardon the dated reference to the UK). In their self-image, the self-employed do not ask for special favours – even now – but see themselves being treated far less favourably than others. And of course some of them are the corporate giants of the future.

They may well wonder if any party is heeding them. They, and their sympathisers on the Conservative backbenchers, have expressed concern. How long the new bail out will last is uncertain – but it will need to be until the customers return: the Treasury will be putting them on a sort of life support.

There are longer-term challenges too. No government has adequately dealt with the culture of late payment of small suppliers by big companies, and every government has complicated the tax regime. To make things worse, as the Taylor review of modern working practices found in 2018, there is no proper statutorily defined legal concept of “self-employed”. Tax law and employment law do not necessarily match, which leads to unnecessary stress and complexity about employment rights and tax bills, as the landmark legal cases brought by Uber drivers against their platform/employer highlighted. Likewise, some people who in reality are working as salaried staff attempt to abuse the tax breaks offered to the self-employed – the bogus self-employed. Some combine a conventional part-time job with legitimate trading on the side. And so on. The current framework of statute, case law and European directives (eg on working hours) and ECJ case law is a mess.

The self-employed have found life more difficult than most over the past decade and a half. Small firms were unable to resort to cash reserves or shareholders during the financial crisis, they suffered during the age of austerity, exporters dreaded Brexit and now Covid-19 threatens to wipe them out. There is a constituency there looking for a political home.