Labour created the welfare state. Now, it’s intent on cutting it back. Labour talked about welfare reform in their manifesto, but never signalled cuts of a scale that even the Tories couldn’t stomach.
by bottish
Labour created the welfare state. Now, it’s intent on cutting it back. Labour talked about welfare reform in their manifesto, but never signalled cuts of a scale that even the Tories couldn’t stomach.
by bottish
18 comments
> Labour was the party that created the welfare state. Now it is intent on cutting it back.
> And in Liz Kendall, the government has found a Labour work and pensions secretary clearly entirely comfortable in going harder on benefit cuts than any of her Conservative predecessors since 2015, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
So, remind me, what is the point of Labour?
Labour are finished
The Tories said they were going to cut £12bn from the benefits bill , compared to the paltry £5bn in savings labour have made.
I seem to remember outrage online whenever anyone called Labour the “Red Tories” before the election.
It’s almost like the Tories crippled the economy and now we have to scramble to fix things before we go over the edge.
Bearing in mind the Tories earmarked more than double the cuts Labour have done, it’s a bit rich for the right-wing media to now go *”oh, the Tories would have **never** done this”*.
Charlatans. The lot of them.
Tax the rich already.
Waiting for a Labour voter to try and defend this heartless move that will affect people who are entitled to help more and it won’t stop scammers as benefit fraud is a small problem.
There is nothing wrong with reviewing and reforming the welfare state, it shouldn’t just stand still. Only those in need should *benefit*, and it should always be proportional to need whilst ensuring those abusing the system can’t (but not at the expense of genuine cases).
If, however, the reform is to simply take a knife and cut off payments carte blanche then it fails on every level.
I’m not too keen on what appears to be the single focal point of the exercise, “getting people back into work”. That distracts them from reviewing any inherent unfairness in the current system.
You all forgot Ian Duncan Smith I see
Are parties forever limited by the founding ideology they started with?
We are just going to keep spiralling downwards imo.
Not totally accurate. Mel Stride criticised the cuts as not going far enough. The blue vermin wanted £12bn cut.
If they used as much effort going after tax avoidance and taxing the rich the country would be in a better state. I keep forgetting that would affect those in power and their friends.
Vilify the poor and disabled, make everyone who suffers from mental health conditions worse. Honestly this is the worst government in recent memory.
SNP need to play a blinder here and grow a back bone! Defend the Scottish people from this tyranny.
An English givernment will never do right by Scotland
They’re the worst type of scum, tory scum
A planned decline in the rate of growth in welfare is not a cut in welfare. Disability payments have grown by 30% since 2019. Economy is no larger now than then.
It would be really good if we could have a simple comparison between the annual loss in revenue from people not paying their tax to the HMRC and the proposed savings that the Red Tories are hoping for in forcing disabled people to either work in excruciating pain or to starve in poverty. Just for completeness.
* [The tax gap is estimated to be 4.8% of total theoretical tax liabilities, or **£39.8 billion** in absolute terms, in the 2022 to 2023 tax year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary)
* [And it’s still not enough to fill the gap. Forecasters estimate the net savings will **only amount to £3.4 billion**…](https://www.politico.eu/article/labour-welfare-cuts-headache-rachel-reeves-migraine/).
So wait a minute. The annual tax gap of missing money is **OVER 10 TIMES** the amount of proposed savings that the Red Tories hope to make in forcing disabled people to either work in excruciating pain or to starve in poverty.
And that does not even cover actually taxing multi-billion pound companies instead of giving them tax breaks.
When Labour set up the welfare state in the late 1940s it accounted for around 5% of GDP
Of course what exactly constitutes the welfare state is evolving all the time.
In 1980, which is probably a reasonable timestamp for the early modern welfare state, and broadly comparable to today’s offer, it cost around 20% of GDP.
In 2025 it’s almost 30% of GDP.
So, what do we do?
Comments are closed.