At face worth, the federal government’s strategy to “get Britain working” marks a pointed departure from the poisonous anti-welfare rhetoric of latest many years.
Each Keir Starmer and his work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, have been at pains to distance themselves from on-off ethical panics about “scroungers” that stretch again to the Seventies.
This narrative has resurfaced periodically within the many years since. We noticed it within the secretary of state for social safety Peter Lilley’s tirade towards “one thing for nothing society” in 1992. And we noticed it within the prime minister David Cameron’s declaration, 20 years later, that “we’re for the employees, they’re [Labour] for the shirkers”.
My very own analysis exhibits that this scrounger discourse reached its most up-to-date zenith below the 2010-2015 Conservative-led coalition, led by Cameron. It spiked in 2013, when ministers and the right-wing press sought to construct in style help for a deluge of welfare reforms. These included a family profit cap, the infamous “bed room tax”, and the introduction of Common Credit score.
In opposition to this backdrop, it has been heartening to witness ministers line as much as disown “scrounger” myths since Labour got here to energy in July 2024.
In a Mail on Sunday op-ed, Starmer endeavoured to reassure “tender Tory” voters of his willpower to drive down the “bulging advantages invoice blighting our society”. However he swung from predictable lunges at “anybody who tries to sport the system” to a markedly extra compassionate tone, promising by no means once more to divide society into employees and shirkers.
Likewise, Kendall pledged to finish “the blame tradition” round advantages. She promised to maneuver away from “all that discuss strivers versus scroungers and shirkers”.
Extra remarkably, in unveiling her plans to help tens of 1000’s of younger folks into work, the work and pensions secretary distanced herself from the label “economically inactive”. That is the bureaucratic time period utilized by the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics to indicate folks out of labor and never actively in search of it.
By describing this chilly depiction of “human beings” as “horrible”, Kendall acknowledged how even supposedly impartial officialese can different and stigmatise people who find themselves struggling.
In so doing, she took a big step in direction of correcting the inference that anybody not in typical employment is merely a “workless” non-contributor. Labels like this are an insult to tens of millions of volunteers and unpaid carers – greater than 1 / 4 of whom are classed as inactive.
Blended indicators
But, beneath this progressive facade, there are disquieting indicators that Labour’s rhetorical about-turn might solely be skin-deep.
Facets of the federal government’s strategy echo harsher back-to-work initiatives. Kendall prefaced her Commons assertion with the warning that below her regime, anybody “who can work should work”. That is an echo of coalition work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s mantra that advantages ought to by no means be a “way of life alternative”.
A Division for Work and Pensions press launch on the brand new employment reforms guarantees to cease “blaming and shaming folks”. However it additionally warns that “individuals who can work will probably be anticipated to work”, and can face “clear penalties in the event that they don’t correctly have interaction”.
At finest, the UK authorities’s measures fail to acknowledge the complexity (in addition to the dimensions) of Britain’s burgeoning “financial inactivity” drawback, not to mention the deep poverty and intersectional disadvantages that always accompany it. At worst, they proceed to softball on drained Tory tropes.
Incapacity campaigners have famous clear contradictions between the federal government’s threats of “profit cuts” and its assurances that disabled folks will probably be given the help they want. In the meantime, anti-poverty charity Turn2Us stated a few of Starmer’s rhetoric “deepens stigma and undermines efforts to rebuild belief in our social safety system”.
Altering the narrative
So, who’re Starmer and Kendall hoping to win over with their extra compassionate general tackle the advantages debate?
In a single sense, their express rejection of scrounger discourse seems to recognise the softening of public attitudes in direction of working-age folks on advantages. Latest research have proven the tide has turned after a few years of intolerance in direction of the unemployed and “inactive”.
Since 2022, the worsening circumstances of welfare have made it tougher for the general public to really feel that claimants are “undeserving scroungers rising wealthy on authorities largesse”.
The pandemic pressured many beforehand self-supporting households to rely, for a time, on state help. Regardless of longstanding tabloid myths about Britain’s over-generous welfare system, its advantages are among the many lowest within the OECD. It’s attainable ministers have calculated that such myths now not persuade the rising quantity of people that have skilled it for themselves.
Younger folks’s psychological well being and general wellbeing have been severely blighted by the pandemic. Most of the “hero voters” so assiduously courted on this yr’s common election will themselves have youngsters and grandchildren who’re struggling.
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Lastly, the UK’s highest charges of “financial inactivity” are typically present in post-industrial areas, notably north-east England. Because of this many “crimson wall” voters with long-term diseases or disabilities are prone to be affected by reforms to well being and incapacity advantages that the federal government will lay out within the spring.
However even when we settle for Starmer’s sincerity in pledging to revive “dignity and respect” to the welfare state, how possible is he to succeed? Within the absence of considerable upfront funding in a desperately frayed security internet, not very.
Kendall might discuss of revamping Jobcentres to show them from factories for “profit administration” (and sanctioning) into engines of alternative. However no quantity of regional devolution or NHS integration will obtain a lot, until it’s paired with a basic corrective: the injection of extra, not much less, public cash.
