So this blog is back after a long break, the day after the introduction of the highly popular 'Benefit Cap' policy which, supposedly, ensures that a household reliant on out-of-work benefits cannot receive more than one working and on average earnings.
Naturally, it actually does no such thing, nor does it even promise to save a significant sum from the 'Welfare' bill, but did any of us who follow these things closely ever believe that was the intention? I think not. There have already been many excellent responses to this poisonous policy - I would draw readers' attention to http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/five-things-iain-duncan-smith-doesnt-want-you-know-about-benefit-cap and http://acuriousorange.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/so-this-morning-i-flicked-on-to-bbc.html#comment-form as two excellent examples.
Having listened with a mixture of inpatience and incredulity to Iain Duncan Smith justifying this disgraceful policy on yesterday's Today programme on Radio 4, during which he appeared to suggest that the truth of the matter was anything he believed it to be, I am moved to resume this blog. Not specifically on account of anything IDS had to say, neither his willful insistence that the Truth was whatever he claimed it to be, nor his calculated suggestion of bias against the BBC: yes, the TV channel that brought us 'On the Fiddle', 'Saints and Sinners' and most recently 'We Pay Your Benefits', and unwittingly or otherwise played straight into the worst prejudices of IDS's cheerleaders with a radio interview on the Benefit Cap issue with one of those likely to suffer - from her accent, an immigrant living in London of African origin. Hardly a propaganda coup for the Left. I bet IDS couldn't believe his luck!
Then we had his taunting of the Labour Party as the 'Welfare Party'. I wish! The people who brought you Employment and Support Allowance and hired Atos to do Incapacity Benefit and ESA medicals - the Welfare Party! Give me strength!
In fact, it was Labour's response which drew me back to the keyboard today.
Unless I have it completely wrong, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne appeared to suggest that the problem with the benefit cap was that it didn't impact large families hard enough, as the Governement's shifty tactic of making Local Authorities impose the cap via Housing Benefit let large households with low housing costs off the hook. To hell with the issues of 'Social Cleansing' of London Boroughs and leafy shires and the sheer absurdity of forcing larger households out of the very areas in which job opportunities are most plentiful. Never mind the homelessness and family breakdown likely to result, the extra mouths to be fed by hard-pressed Foodbanks. Let IDS tell his statistical lies unchallenged. What's wrong with this policy is that some people won't be affected by it!
Well, there goes my idea of rejoining the party once I have a steady wage again. At least not while Liam Byrne is within spitting distance of anything Work and Pensions related.
How should the response have gone? Imagine for a moment, Ed Milliband on his feet at that 'Welfare Party' gibe. He faces the Government benches defiantly...
'Mr Speaker, the Right Honourable Member for Toryshire implies that I should feel shame at the suggestion that Labour is 'The Welfare Party'. Should not every party have the welfare of this country and its people at heart? If we are not the 'Welfare Party', what should we be? The 'Workfare Party'. who allow profitable multi-national companies to use the labour of unemployed workers for profit at taxpayers' expense? Or the 'Workhouse Party', who would confine young mothers and their babies to hostels out of spite, regardless of the needs of the children and the best interests of the women?
'I'm proud of my Party's part in founding our Welfare State at a time of great economic hardship, and of all that it has done to create a fair and modern Social Security system; but I agree, there is much to reform. Tax Credits are no substitute for fair wages, and a generous income from Housing Benefit should not be a lifestyle choice for landlords. The next Labour Government will therefore bring forward legislation to increase the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage. We will build adequate Social Housing and reintroduce rent controls in the private sector, in order that key workers are not priced out of our wealthier cities. These measures will reduce the cost of Social Security spending to the state, but not by taking food from the mouths of the poorest children, or driving our most vulnerable citizens to despair. And that is not all...'
I woke up at that point, to find myself still in this place where politicians try to outbid each other in their attacks on the poorest members of society in a desperate competition to capture the moral low ground of perceived public opinion. But the dream was great, while it lasted...
