Blame the poor, blame the uneducated, blame the sick.
I sometimes wonder why I write a politics blog when I'm so disgusted and often turned off by the minutiae of the policies espoused by all of the political parties. I'm directly referring in this instance to the Tory proposals on welfare reform, more on which in a moment.First though, it's the return of politics after the season where we mostly concern ourselves with the internal family equivalent. Old Gordie Brown has been having a thorough think during Winterval, as though he doesn't do that intensively every moment of the day anyway, and he decided that his prime ministership needed a relaunching after the accumulation of disasters that left him about as feted at the end of the year as Chris Langham crossed with the McCanns. (Speaking of which, perhaps he can relaunch his career by playing Robert Murat in the Maddie movie.) If there's one thing Brown knows about, it's tradition, so this relaunch looked much the same as his original charm offensive. Off he went to the Andrew Marr programme, talking of "fiscal arithmetic", promising to clamp-down on inflationary pay demands, whether they be from MPs themselves, the police or the angels, and how he's going to transform the NHS into a bastion of prevention from bad health rather than the source of it as it is now. It culminated with a similar interview in the Observer where he set out his stall on how he's going to save us from ourselves in this "dangerous" year. The solutions are 42 days, even though he's determined to find a compromise when there isn't one on such a fundamental matter of civil liberties, and ID cards, which despite the child benefit database debacle, won't be "compulsory", despite the legislation which has passed through the Commons confirming that they err, will be just that.
Next step in the fightback was the finding of a proper spin doctor. Served badly by his advisers from his days in the Treasury and by his cabal of "Young Turks" centred around Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander and Ed Miliband, he's called on the services of Stephen Carter, who just happens to be the chief executive of a PR firm. So much for all the jibes at Cameron about being in a similar but lower down position at the ITV regional broadcaster Carlton; now Brown needs just that sort of experience in his cabinet. Carter should in any case be used to being in charge of such a dysfunctional outfit as 10 Downing Street under Brown; he was head of NTL when it was nicknamed "NTHell" by its long-suffering customers, now under the yolk of Richard Branson in the similarly revamped Virgin Media. Most hilarious though were the remarks from the Tory Caroline Spelman about Brown bringing in another spin doctor rather than getting on with the job. That would be the same Conservative party that employs as its chief spin doctor the former editor of the News of the Screws, a man with about as much political knowledge as a fruit bat.
Spelman does have something of a wider point: this was the same Gordon Brown who standing in Downing Street last year faced by the world media talked of change as much as Lionheart talks about how evil Muslims are. For as long as he went on unscathed, regardless of attacks by patio gas canister jihadists, floods or foot and mouth, the status quo was acceptable. It was only once he departed for an opportunistic visit to Basra at the start of the Tory conference that everything started to fall apart. After all, while everything's going well, you don't need someone to distort the reality of what's happening for you. That was why the Labour reliance on Alastair Campbell and news management was so perplexing: when the majority of the media was so favourable to you, why did you need to be practicing the dark arts? Campbell's blithe explanation that he never wanted to see a Labour prime minister on the Sun front page on election day in a light bulb again is an excuse, not a reason. You can at least respect Brown's decision to employ one now, even if you can't accept it.
Brown's maneuvering on the NHS and with Carter though is nothing to the latest populist measures from the Tories dressed up in their compassionate clothing. The illusion under David Cameron has been that this is a changed party, one that isn't going to come out with reactionary nonsense about asylum islands again or ask whether we're thinking what they're thinking. Even while headbangers like David Davis remain in position but at least sensibly oppose extended detention for terrorist suspects, and they propose inheritance tax cuts while bribing the married middle classes, the emphasis has been on the touchy-feely environmental promises and just what a thoroughly nice bloke Dave is. This has worked when Labour has been woeful, but while Brown looked fresh in the summer it briefly fell apart. The support for the Tories isn't because they're trusted or look like they're ready to form a government, it's because they're not New Labour.
Whether their welfare reform proposals published today will change any minds remain to be seen. What is clear is that just like in the past, what first goes in the United States eventually winds its way over here. Quite where they're inspired from is contentious: some say Wisconsin, others say New York state. Whichever it is, neither can be a direct comparison with the benefit system currently in operation here, where our population vastly outnumbers that of both. As Chris points out, when you get down to the actual figures involved, despite them initially looking huge, they're far smaller than you're probably being led to believe.
First up is a reassessing of every single person on incapacity benefit, of which there are 2.64 million current claimants, by a doctor. As Labour has argued, this would be hugely expensive, incredibly time-consuming, a waste of resources and probably do next to nothing to actually bring the figure down. It has to be remembered that some of those on incapacity benefit have not worked for nigh on 20 years: the unlucky who found themselves out of work during the glorious Thatcherite revolution, shoved onto IB to bring down the unemployment figures. They're simply not going to work again, full stop, however uncomfortable that is for any political party but especially the Tories to admit. As has been pointed out, incapacity benefit is now in actual fact incredibly difficult to get on: a relative of mine who at one point was only given a few years' to live and has chronic back pain was refused. Those on it are overwhelmingly genuinely sick or unemployable; getting them off IB and onto jobseekers' allowance or even into employment will save the state either a whopping £22 a week or £200 a week. It sounds a lot, but in the scheme of things will make next to no difference to the Treasury coffers.
The changes to JA itself are no better. Those on it for 2 years will be expected to carry out "community work"; for which almost certainly read the removal of graffiti, picking up rubbish, maybe setting plants or general cleaning up. The Conservatives haven't explained how those already employed to do just that, or indeed those carrying out "community service" which often also involves just those things are going to be affected. When not cleaning up the trash, there'll be expected to be at "back-to-work" centres, where they'll be able to do everything apart from seemingly the training that politicians of all stripes think will be needed in the "knowledge" economy. These centres, to be run by the private or voluntary firms so en vogue with the Tories, will also be paid according to how many they either get back into work or off benefits when they refuse an "reasonable" job offer. As with much else of the plans, what a "reasonable" job offer will be isn't defined. Those who do so though will be more or less destitute or dependent on others, as they will first lose benefits for a month, then three months, then three years. Whether some will accept job offers then quit immediately or get themselves sacked so as not to lose benefit and how they will be dealt with also isn't considered.
The main reasons behind all of this are again explained well by Chris. Like him, I also think the biggest motivation behind it is the get tough strategy. So prevalent is the view that those on benefits are either skivers or scrounging, repeated endlessly in the tabloid press, that if you're told a lie enough you'll often start to believe. As with so much else, there are some who could work but who don't simply because they can. For the majority though, who desperately would like to work but who can't for a whole spectrum of different reasons, making their lives even more miserable seems to be a Conservative priority. David Cameron asks where the dignity is "in sitting at home, dependent on the state, not having a job?", but where also is the respect for those that can't? It takes something to make New Labour look humane and liberal, but the Tories have somehow managed it.
Labels: Conservatives, Gordon Brown, Labour relaunch, politics, spin, Stephen Carter, welfare reform
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