Moral arguments. Like pre-Sadiq London buses, you don’t get any for 14 years of Tory austerity, and then they all come along at once.
The issue of welfare reform has become a moral-soaked battleground for Labour and looks unlikely to end without significant blood-letting. The combatants may be staggering towards some negotiated deal ahead of next Tuesday’s vote – but the wounds will be a long time healing.
On one side is the Government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who this week expressed a “clear moral case” for welfare reform. Discussing the changes last month, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: “For me, this is a moral mission because I believe that there is a better future for people in so many parts of the country.”
Elsewhere, the morality rhetoric was ramped up further with talk of the “moral imperative” of liberating the nation’s 10 million people of working age from a benefits trap, which deprives them of the dignity that work brings, and its emotional and material rewards.
There’s also the well-rehearsed moral argument that increasing the working age benefits bill from £48.5bn in 2024 to £75.7bn in 2030 (as predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility) prevents the nation from spending that money in other crucial areas.
Yet in the rapidly swelling ranks of rebels (now sitting at more than 120), there is moral outrage from those who believe that Labour – of all parties – should be protecting the disabled and most vulnerable.
As Jen Craft, MP for Thurrock, said: “I didn’t stand for election to make disabled people’s lives harder.” A coalition of more than 100 charities, including Scope, Macmillan and Parkinson’s UK, has called the reforms “immoral and devastating”.
Opponents make a compelling moral argument by pointing to the Government’s own analysis that the cuts risks pushing a quarter of a million people into poverty, including 50,000 children. It is thought that 3.2 million families in total would be left less well off.
And so morals have been pitted against morals, raising the stakes of what was always going to be a difficult policy response to a highly emotive all-out crisis surrounded by whisperings of “regime change”.
But, of course, morality is entirely subjective. The Fore people of Papua New Guinea practiced endocannibalism: eating their relatives when they died, believing it was the moral way to honour them and ensure a successful passage to the afterlife. They thought burying the dead was cruel. Whereas here we honour our dead by burying them and erecting headstones.
Admittedly, the example is extreme, but you get my point: morality is not an absolute, but a construct of emotion, instinct and societal norms. And so no amount of prime ministerial authority, productivity spreadsheets or grim-faced whips can persuade people of what they don’t instinctively feel in their gut.
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Moral authority is earned not by the strength of the belief, but by the ability to convince others of it. And a “moral argument” is actually just like any other argument, where people with opposing outlooks, opinions and desires for different outcomes slug it out, prefixing their case with “moral” to persuade/shame others into alignment.
In the case of Labour’s welfare reforms, the moral argument has failed, because it didn’t convince MPs and the wider country. A YouGov poll showed that while a majority of the country backed the idea of welfare reform, 45 per cent said people with a disability received too little support from the benefits system.
It certainly didn’t convince the 51 rebels with smaller majorities than there are PIP claimants in their constituency. It didn’t even convince many of those still loyal to Starmer.
And yet there is no doubt welfare costs are out of control. More people must be reintroduced to the world of work. And some people are gaming the system.
Most of the rebels agree welfare reform is needed. But they also know the Treasury pushed this plan too far to ker-ching the cash. The moral argument lost credibility and the ability to “convince others”.
After months of attacks for being a technocratic, spreadsheety kind of government, those in charge obviously felt an emotional “moral mission” vibe was needed to get the party and country on side.
But the Government went to a morality street fight armed with a teaspoon, up against tooled-up folk in wheelchairs, those with visual impairments and carers for disabled children. Those people didn’t just take the moral high ground; they entirely colonised it.
MP Jen Craft was one of many who was incredibly compelling, beginning frequent media interviews with the line: “As a disabled person and the mother of a disabled daughter…” Who can argue with a moral case such as that?
Craft is also a great example of why DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) still matters. Only by having people with diverse experiences and opinions can robust decisions be made that will convince others.
It is this kind of moral authority that will convince others. And that wins a moral argument.
Alison Phillips is a former editor of the ‘Daily Mirror’; she won Columnist of the Year at the 2018 National Press Awards
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