This is the week Labour turned its back on the welfare state
As Ed Miliband backs a cap on benefits spending, Tom Walker says that the more you read of Labour’s new welfare policies, the worse it gets
They finally went and did it. Granted, the signs have long been there – not least in human form as Liam Byrne – but this week the Labour leadership finally capitulated to the Tory agenda on benefits once and for all.
This is what Ed Miliband said today: ‘The biggest item of expenditure, alongside the NHS, is the social security budget. The next Labour government will have less money to spend… Social security spending, vital as it is, cannot be exempt from that discipline.’ He came out in favour of a three-year cap on welfare spending.
As ever with an Ed Miliband speech, there is plenty of vague leftish waffle in there to sugar the pill – this time talking about housebuilding and tackling private landlords. But that should not distract us from the core of the message, full of disgusting phrases like ‘something for nothing’, ‘there is a minority who don’t work but should’ and ‘it is wrong to be idle on benefits when you can work’.
The more you read, the worse it gets. Miliband thinks that people should get lower unemployment benefits unless they have worked for at least five years. He proposes that parents should be forced (‘we should offer and demand’) into work-related training when their children are as young as 3. He supports Atos-style tests for disability benefit in principle. He says the retirement age should increase – again!
No opposition to cuts
All that comes after Ed Balls’ prelude earlier in the week. His plan to slash winter fuel payments was widely reported as only hitting ‘wealthy pensioners’. But this is to misunderstand the point of the principle of universal benefits.
As soon as you limit benefits to people on lower incomes, you introduce the nightmare of means-testing, where people have to fill in long forms and prove they’re poor to get the benefit. People feel stigmatised, and afraid that any error will carry a harsh punishment. The end result is that many leave money they are entitled to unclaimed.
Balls spoke of ‘iron discipline’ on spending – and said he would stick to the Tories’ spending plans after the election. In one deft move, then, Labour has not only given in over welfare but sold the pass on all public spending cuts for years to come.
Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee offered this explanation for his motive: ‘Swallowing the iron envelope hurts, but it has become a necessity since Labour’s failure to win crucial arguments: Labour “overspending” has been successfully blamed for the size of the national debt… The hard truth is that the Tories and their mighty press have won the battle over the writing of that history, as victors do.’
But is it any wonder that support for welfare is slipping when the main social democratic party refuses to argue for it? Is it a surprise that people don’t ‘get’ universalism when there’s no voice putting it forward? Are we really supposed to believe that people are so easily led that the right wing press’ myth-making can make them magically forget the entire banking crisis?
If Labour won’t speak up for the welfare state at the very moment when its existence is imperilled, then it’s up to us on the left to make sure we defend it more strongly than ever.
16 comments
16 responses to “This is the week Labour turned its back on the welfare state”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
ongoing
Just Stop Oil – Slow Marches
Slow marches are still legal (so LOW RISK of arrest), and are extremely effective. The plan is to keep up the pressure on this ecocidal government to stop all new fossil fuel licences.
Saturday 27th April: national march for Palestine
National demonstration.
Ceasefire NOW! Stop the Genocide in Gaza: Assemble 12 noon Central London
Full details to follow
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
Yet more evidence that Labour act in the interests of capital, not labour.
Yet more reason to support Left Unity.
Well said Tom. Labour could have countered the prevailing narrative but sold out their roots long ago. If there ‘will be less money to spend’ then Labour should be out there finding creative solutions, not promising to further carry out the amoral and punitive agenda against those more vulnerable.
Tax everyone proportionate to their income with no exceptions and no sweetheart deals. Close off shore tax havens, close tax loopholes and allowing companies to register elsewhere while profiting here. Reduce the military budget and stop foreign interventions. End the revolving door corporate ties to politics and have strict regulations for lobbyists. Strengthen unions, lower student fees and cap rents. Build more housing and create more jobs in green technology.
These are the kinds of things we should expect from a Labour government but will likely never see.
So you’re right, we need to defend the welfare state more strongly than ever because no one else will!
Good post, obviously no mention by Milliband it was New Labour who largely created the ‘hardline’ public mood on benefits, etc with its leaks to the tabloids, anti-fraud campaigns (the ubiquitous targets and ‘we are onto you’ posters ran for years) very similar to the anti-shirker campaigns in the old Eastern Bloc. Along with (a few) others I campaigned against the initial N/L Welfare Reform Bill and encounted misinformation, spin, and lies, both from the govt and the BBC, etc. One also has to say, these beliefs and opinions that there are “many scroungers”, “people ‘swinging the lead” is not just prevalent in the Labour Party, I’ve heard similar from Trade Unionists, Anarchists and many liberal types. I think this may be the reason anti welfare cuts protests are so sparsely attended.
I wonder if we will see the numbers protesting about the welfare reforms that we are rightly seeing against the EDL, etc. A significant number of people are committing suicide, (google Craigs List) milllions are living in fear of cuts or the dreaded brown DWP envelope, one man is even on hunger strike against the way ATOS treats disabled claimants. This is a major crisis, but it seems benefit/welfare issues aren’t ‘sexy’ and it just hasn’t seemed to be a priority for the left of all persuasions.
There are some signs of this changing, even the SWP have helped set up the Benefit Justice Campaign and of course there is now the bedroom tax but despite the harrassment, cuts and deaths it doesn’t seem to resonate with the many liberal types who one sees on the say anti-war, demos, I hope this changes as it is an equally important issue.
By capping welfare spending, Labour has abandoned an important principle – automatic stabilizers. Even the IMF, in their advice to Osbourne, stressed the importance of their role in preventing mass poverty.
Labour, to the right of the IMF. You can’t make it up.
Commentators say that Miliband and Labour have crossed the Rubicon by dropping the defense of universal benefits as Tom Walker points out. Of course Labour has a history of means testing welfare benefits, most recently with elderly care, so their many bridges across this particular Rubicon are not new. What is new is that they believe they have lost the argument in society (among those likely to vote) over Welfare CUTS. Miliband’s speech is about Labour saying , like the Tories, we will cut welfare. He wants to remove that from the argument in society. He wants to establish that all the political class agrees welfare must be cut. Miliband needs the argument to be about who wants higher wages (living standards) and who wants cheaper housing. He thinks the government are relying on a housing bubble to make likely voters go for the Tories in 2015. He wants to say – subsidise employers to go from minimum wage to the ‘living wage’ and let councils subsidise landlords and borrow more to build housing! Even if these feeble proposals were implemented they would change nothing substantial in the basic trend of concentration of wealth at the top and immiseration of the rest of us. And they would probably fall foul anyway of Multinational and City of London alarm.
What should we say? We should say that the big answer to the crisis is to massively increase the incomes (from both the employers and from the state) of the poor. We should also say that the first step, after Miliband’s speech, is that all trade unions need to become politically independent. That the most organised, core phalanxes of a new working class need to create a new working class politics and economics based on a fundamental redistribution of wealth.
Miliband spent a lot of time yesterday banging on about the high cost of housing and the high cost of housing benefits. But he had no serious answer…except build more houses.
I think we should demand that ALL RENTS, paid to private landlords and social/state housing owners, should be CONTROLLED and not be allowed to increase more than the average annual increase in wages. If average wages go up 1%, so can rents increase by 1%, not 10% as often happens today, especially in London.
My two sons who live there pay £650.00 per month to rent a single room in a shared house; that is more than the rent for an entire good-sized three bed house here in Nottingham.
In other words, we need government controls on rents. The prices of a number of essential commodities are controlled; what is more essential than a place to live?
Such a rental control scheme would:
a) keep rents under some control and greatly assist tenants; this should be our main objective.
b) dramatically cut the total cost of the housing benefits programme,which is essentially a state subsidy to landlords.
c) reduce property speculation, including buy-to-let schemes, and more generally decrease the cost of housing, whether rented or owned.
And it would also demarcate Left Unity from the Labour Party, which is so fearful to do anything that might erode, even slightly, the root cause of the housing crisis in this country: the private property system itself.
It’s not enough alone, though, Alan. If you cap rents, you also need to stop properties being taken off the rental market. That means putting a tax on empty property.
Also on empty brownfield land – which companies are sitting on. And for THAT, it should be a scaling tax, based on the number of years it’s been sitting empty.
And we need to be building council houses on brownfield land. Yes, we need to take into account the lessons learned from older council estates, but we also need high-density housing – and smaller accommodation for younger single people, which could very well be in tower blocks and on shorter leases (2-3 years).
Andrew:
Some good points here in your response. And I do not disagree.
The idea, however, I was trying to advance (rent increases tied to wages) is not something that would SOLVE all aspects of the housing crisis in this country. So, yes, by itself, it would not be enough.
But what I was suggesting might:
a) be a challenge to the absolute sovereignty of private property;
b) be a working class demand that, if implemented, would actually assist tenants;
c) be a LU point of demarcation obviously from the Tories, but also from Labour and their ‘build more houses is all we need’ approach;
d) be the type of grabby, easily grasped, and distinctive type of slogan/demand that would attract interest among potential supporters and open up debates on doorsteps about housing, capitalism and socialism.
Iram “Tax everyone proportionate to their income with no exceptions and no sweetheart deals. Close off shore tax havens, close tax loopholes and allowing companies to register elsewhere while profiting here. Reduce the military budget and stop foreign interventions. End the revolving door corporate ties to politics and have strict regulations for lobbyists. Strengthen unions, lower student fees and cap rents. Build more housing and create more jobs in green technology.”
I very good starting list of a list of “What Left Unity stands for” that we so desperately now need on our web site. We are about to have our first street stall in Milton Keynes this Saturday (I will write a report after the event) and we have had to make up all our own material based on the very little available on this site and other branch sites. It is also nice to see a good political article. As important as the debate about the political direction of Left Unity is (and it IS important) it needs to be balanced with political comment such as this article and reports of action and interventions by local branches (which is reported on too little). It would help if this site was redesigned (that mast head is far too large, along with a resource section for branches and at least a basic “what we stand for statement” ASAP (I think it would help if we knew the date of the next national delegate meeting so we all knew the time scale for discussing the future of LU). It is essential there is a report published after the first meeting on the new national committee (and when is that?)- information is the key connecting us all.
The recent macho posturing by Ed Balls about ‘iron discipline’ parallels Gordon the moron Brown in the 9o’s and is followed by the usual Milibrand waffle and bollocks over ‘wellfare reform’, only serves to utterly discredit the Labour party in the eyes of ever increasing number of former Labour voters/members and many others besides and simply further reinforces Labour’s full hearted committment to the neo liberal capitalist agenda if it were neeeded.The only real difference between Labour ,the Lib Dems and Tories is simply one of presentation.
We need a wholesale radical shake up of this whole bloody political system from top to bottom, from rubber stamp neo liberal local council chambers to The fusty sleazed drenched commons and the archais antique something for sleeping in retirement Lords. The rich and wealthy get away with murder on a daily basis,served by large numbers of our so called political representatives who suck and leach like bloated parasites off our rotten, festering and deeply corrupt political system as a matter of course.
Whether Left unity can succeed in pulling over Labour councillors and Left MP’s remains to be seen, ontop of the ever increasing numbers of thoroughly disillusioned former Labour members and voters. Whether the likes of Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell would ever be prepared to jump ship or even Tony Benn in his dotage is highly unlikely. Were they prepared to make such a jump then their Left rhetoric might then become much more credible and meaningful and would send out an urgent message to greater numbers of Labour people that something is seriously amiss in the Kingdom and we need viable and visionary Democratic Socialist social economic ecological change and transformation and to believe that it would or could ever come from a future Labour Government is PIE IN THE SKY.
“Working class people are born naked, wet, and hungry, and get slapped on our ass, then things just keep getting worse”
Ed’s statement is disgusting, says it all, purple blue Labour or is it red Tory. Ok, so what is LU going to do about it? what are the Unions doing?
Waiting to read the LU manifesto for the next election.
Politics of opposition turns people & parties towards the politics of opportunism that lacks any political soul ,or a depth of belief .
Take Blair as a prime example he & his disciples morphed the Labour Party into branded politics that took them into the depths of a form of conservatism that resonated with the voters ,but from a political perspective it lacked political longevity not in terms of years in office ,but as a political brand it had a sell by date.
Now the politics of 2013 is repeating itself in terms of branded politics now we are offered up Milibands “one nation” we are watching slowly but surely his brand wear the clothes & values of conservatism yet he gives off the aura of a leader in waiting who has the interests of working people at its core ,yet wears the political clothes & values of those he claims are “out of touch”.
If they are so “out of touch” why would any so called socialist so readily embrace tory values 2.5 yrs away from a general election .
All radicals can only conclude Miliband is the new Blair smoke screen attacks on your opponents yet quietly go about acting & reacting just like them ,recent press statements on benefits being a prime example .
The onslaught towards working people in both their communities & workplace (so far) merited a radical agenda of change of direction & renewal instead the official opposition serve up a political diet Milibands version of austerity ,that must of been music to the ears of Cameron & co ,as the clear blue water ,simply became just tory blue water .
If ever the need for a radical alternative was highlighted its been in the last few weeks as Cameron Clegg & Miliband all become one & the same,more in common than they dare politically admit to ! .
Peter…………….
Talking to a fair few young people, twenty some-things here on the anti-EDL rally, I got the impression many are looking for a new political vehicle/movement, one that is non or less hierarchal open and democratic, they seem repulsed by Millipede, the benefit cuts and his endorsement of them and the rush to the right by the L/P, will L/U be that vehicle or will it blow it by repeating the mistakes of the past?, I hope and reckon it could be the former if new thinking, creativity is unleashed.
Benefits cuts/changes, Atos medicals, harassment of claimants which is causing misery and leading some to suicide has to be a priority for LU, imo: Unite Community are doing good work in this area and would be worthwhile allies with this hard , non sexy but crucial field.
The more that Miliband, Byrne, Balls, et al, endlessly hammer the point home that actually a next Labour Government would be pretty much identical to the current Coalition in all key policies and priorities, and right wing prejudices, the less reason voters have of course to actually cast their vote for a party that appears to have nothing substantially different to offer to the Tories and Lib Dems !
And in addition Labour are also quite rightly seen as the bunch of incompetents who had a major role in bringing on the 2007/2008 banking and credit bubble crisis which has justified the entire Austerity Offensive . Of course the millionaire owned mass media have spent the entire time since the banking collapse of 2008 trying to “rewrite history” by placing the source of the worldwide “sovereign debt” crisis not as the direct consequence of the bank bailout, but instead as a direct and sole consequence of supposed “lavishly freespending” governments like Labour – giving us all “unsustainable luxuries” – like good health services and pensions !
The real crime of governments like the Blair/Brown (and Miliband/Balls) Labour Government in recklessly deregulating the finance sector, allowing ever greater tax avoidence by the supperrich and big corporations , and enabling the destruction of our manufacturing sector in favour of the corrupt spiv economy of “the City”, has been “airbrushed” from history. Nevertheless , whether the voting public buys into either the bogus “Labour caused the government debt crisis through lavish overspending on public services” or the correct one of “New Labour freed the bankers to speculate and rob , along with maintaining an unsustainable housing and debt bubble , until the system crashed”, the picture the pro Tory press will impart forcibly come election time is the message of “New Labour may be identical on most issues to the Tories – but they are also INCOMPETENT – and CAUSED the 2008 Crash”. Now we know the Tories are utterly incompetent too, but the Tory press wont be highlighting that reality will they !
My point is that it is a far from forgone conclusion that Miliband and co will win the 2015 General Election – so close to all the pro austerity policies of the coalition is their “electoral Offer”. New Labour thinks this is a strength – because their (often American) election strategy spin doctor advisors are obsessed with the relatively few Tory/Labour swing voters in marginal constituencies – yet just arrogantly assume that the working class Labour vote will hold up regardless of how anti working class Labour promises its policies will be ! No doubt the desertion of significant numbers of Labour voters to “protest vote vehicle” parties like UKIP or Greens, even the BNP, are giving some concerns to the Labour Party electoral strategy analysts, but there seems little chance of any real “shift left” policy-wise to meet the real needs of traditional working class Labour supporters. For the cynical political operators of New Labour the only rhetorical “shift to address working class concerns” that Miliband and co can countenance is to vomit out some anti immigrant or anti “welfare scrounger” bile. So much easier to engage in empty scapegoating than to promise to end the privatisation of the NHS, or to really have a serious go at ending the daylight robbery the lax tax system is allowing for the superrich and big business.
As many others have rightly said here, Whether New Labour wins or loses in 2015, The bosses’ Austerity Offensive will continue unabated. Until we , the majority of citizens ,stop them in their tracks . It is well past time to consign the now utterly rotten Labour Party to the dustbin of history – and build a new radical Left party to fight the cause of working people.