Broken benefits
OUR welfare system is wildly out of control — and Labour’s commendable reforms are a vital first effort to rein it in. They may still be too mild to turn it around.
That is unsurprising. The barrage of abuse the Government faced yesterday — from outraged left-wing charities, Labour voters and its own despairing backbenchers — showed what Ministers were up against tackling benefits at all.
Labour’s commendable reforms are a vital first effort to rein in Britain’s welfare systemRex
Those objectors inhabit a fantasy world where all claimants are genuinely needy.
Where Labour, once the party of workers, should instead prioritise those NOT working.
Where taxes paid by those in jobs are limitless and the rich can be hammered again and again without any negative consequences.
It is as reckless as it is stupid.
Among all the depressing recent welfare statistics, most shocking are the rise of 700,000 in incapacity benefit claimants since Covid and the one in ten working-age people now getting sickness or disability handouts.
Plenty are of course genuine.
But making benefits easier to secure was catnip to huge numbers who loved being paid by the State to do nothing in the pandemic.
The fact TikTok reprobates now coach them on how to embellish their case makes matters worse.
By 2030 the welfare bill is set to top £100billion. That’s absurdly unaffordable.
In that context, the £5billion saving projected by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall looks very small beer, even if realised in full.
It was bizarre, too, for her to blame this crisis somehow on the Thatcher-era Tories of four decades ago, as if 13 years of “New Labour” never happened.
But if by cutting certain benefits and tightening up eligibility and assessments she propels good numbers back to work, she’ll have made a decent start.
We can only hope it works.
Zero Marx
WHAT a surprise. A left-wing academic obsessed with gender, diversity and social justice has produced — to order — a woke new plan for educating Britain’s kids.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson will doubtless embrace Prof Becky Francis’s every word.
Fewer GCSE exams, more cushy coursework, less “rote learning”, greater emphasis on diversity.
Just the sort of dumbing-down which produced lower standards when Labour last tried it.
Why can’t THEY learn?
English kids thrived under the Tories’ tougher new curriculum, soaring up international league tables.
In SNP-run Scotland and Labour-run Wales they slipped back or stood still.
Ms Phillipson won’t have it.
But then she has been Keir Starmer’s weakest hire so far: A front for hard-Left unions which prioritise teachers over pupils.
A woman keener on traditional Labour dogma than what is proven to work.
She can change our minds . . . by binning this blueprint for decline.
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