It’s probably the quietest crowd of angry people we’ve ever seen in this country. They don’t argue. They don’t write flaming open letters. How could they? They don’t even tell children and friends about the situation they have found themselves in. That’s how deep the shame about financial problems is. Our reporter Esther De Leebeeck spoke anonymously with several of them this week while they were queuing for the food bank in Kortrijk. Many of them people with a full-time job. In a month’s time, the food banks saw up to 25% more people queuing. Esther told me that most hope this is a temporary situation and that food and energy prices will soon return to normal. But experts and economists are no longer sure of that. Now many people from the lower middle class can still avoid the step to the food bank by using their savings. But with each month that the high prices continue, that dam is also about to break.
It’s not that nothing has happened politically. But the measures that were taken were either aimed at the lowest social categories, or they were interventions that had only a very limited impact. There is no real sense of urgency and the need for long-term and structural interventions. The political debate is currently more about nitrogen and the fathers of Averbode. Not an unimportant subject, of course, but the two million people who fall into the lower middle class rightly expect that priorities will be set differently. They shouldn’t be fooled either. There are no easy solutions when prices are skyrocketing worldwide. But they deserve that their primary concern should also be the government’s primary concern. If parties do not make this their full focus in the coming period, they risk being punished like never before in elections in 2024 and there is a threat of a huge shift to the extreme right. Vlaams Belang hardly talks about migration on social media, but only about inflation. In the past week alone, twelve posts on Facebook about purchasing power and rising prices. The caricatural solutions do not have to be taken over by other parties, but that focus does.