Older readers may remember a time in the 1970s when Margaret Thatcher, then the Education Secretary, earned the nickname ‘Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’, after depriving the nation’s schoolkids of their daily pint of the white stuff.
Is our current Prime Minister about to emulate her by becoming known as ‘Keir Starmer – Benefits Harmer?’
Ministers have described the current welfare bill as ‘unsustainable’ – and are planning big changes to the system. Health Secretary Wes Streeting even claimed that doctors are over diagnosing mental health conditions. Cuts seem inevitable.
There are signs of toing and froing between Downing Street and the party’s backbenchers who are concerned that this is a betrayal of what Labour stands for, especially after the winter fuel allowance was slashed.
The noises emanating from Number 10 certainly indicate the further rightward tack of the government.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who has read ‘Get In’, the recently published story of Starmer’s journey to Downing Street by Garbriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire.
The book highlights how much The PM’s success was masterminded by strategist Morgan McSweeney and how little it owed to any strong belief in traditional Labour values.
At the time of writing, details of the government’s plans for welfare haven’t been announced, but the budgetary pressures are enormous. The number of people claiming sickness or disability benefits in England and Wales has risen from 2.8 million in 2019 to around 4 million today,
Adrian Goldberg discusses the rhetoric and the reality of benefits cuts with Byline Times political editor Adam Bienkov and Tom Pollard, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation. Tom works part-time as a frontline mental health crisis worker, and previous advised the DWP on mental health policy.
The Byline Podcast is produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg.
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