There are a number of problems with making a “moral” argument for a policy which you then junk, credibility being the most obvious. Labour backbenchers had already got a whiff of Starmer’s tendency to be pushed into a U-turn over the winter fuel payment, and had reasonably concluded that they just needed to hold out through the silly threats about no ministerial jobs, removing the whip from over 100 MPs, or aspersions about their morals, until the Prime Minister decided it was politically expedient to cave.
The deeper problem, though, is that the cuts that Labour MPs were so worried about had little to do with morality anyway. There is of course a moral imperative to get people out of a benefits trap and into work. The welfare system does not work currently, and most of the people in it would agree with that.
It was hardly a secret that the Government needed to do the latter: Rachel Reeves cobbled together an additional £500m of cuts to welfare at the last minute before her Spring Statement in March because the Office for Budget Responsibility told her the existing package, set out just days before, wouldn’t save enough.
So backbenchers felt an insult to their intelligence as well as their morals in being asked to regard these proposals as “reforms” rather than cuts. Most party leaders secretly think that the bulk of their backbench colleagues would do a terrible job of running the country, and they’re not entirely wrong. But the problem is when they start treating those MPs in a way that betrays that private belief.
square ZOë GRüNEWALD Labour needs to stay strong on workers’ rights if it wants a second term
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Most of the discussion following this latest U-turn has been about the impact on Starmer’s political credibility, or on whether the Treasury will be able to find the cash that it has now lost from its benefit cuts. But something else that has taken a real knocking over the past few months is the very idea of welfare reform.
To be fair to Osborne, he at least always described what he was doing in purely fiscal terms, rather than clothing it in arguments about reform. He also knew that whatever benefit cuts he came up with, the public would just want more. Now, focus groups show an electorate horrified by the proposed changes to personal independence payment, rather than baying for tougher measures.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator magazine
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