This book is about a ‘shame game’ that is being played out against millions of the poorest people in Britain and America. It tells the story of how a pervasive toxic narrative that shames and blames the poor has secured a stranglehold on our collective understanding of poverty and it asks how we might bring this to an end. Drawing on interviews with people in both countries who have first-hand experience of poverty, this book documents how a narrative – a powerful story – plays a pivotal role in sustaining and justifying high levels of poverty and inequality by repeatedly misrepresenting, and stigmatising, people who are poor. It examines how we can shift perceptions and work towards building a consensus on how to tackle poverty and improve people's lives.

For a long time in the US and the UK, two of the wealthiest yet most unequal nations on earth, the primary story told about poverty has been that it is the fault of the individual and is the result of personal flaws or ‘bad life decisions’ rather than policy choices or economic inequality. If only people worked harder, if only they ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ or got ‘on their bikes’, as the one-time Conservative Secretary for Education Norman Tebbit once declared, they too could find a job, they too could ‘make it’, the story goes. In fact, some people believe poverty doesn't exist (or barely) in America and Britain, while others argue that we have no choice but to accept that ‘the poor’ will always be with us.