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

The self-employed should be natural Tory voters, but they won’t forget this delay in helping them at a time of crisis, writes Sean O'Grady

Putting the employed first may have cost the chancellor future votes (Getty)

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.