At last week’s Scottish Labour conference, talk about social justice and a new economy prevailed, so it’s little wonder that the sense of anger at Labour MPs (MPs from the Party credited with creating the welfare state) is so palpable on Twitter and other social media today after they voted for the welfare cap, which will limit spending on safety net benefits for people with disabilities and many other vulnerable people.
The Herald think piece by Iain Macwhirter also captures this anger:
“Labour is now on record as accepting the logic of an indefinite limit on welfare, something no party has ever proposed before because it locks in unfairness and penalises those least able to look after themselves.”
Of course there is understandable and continuing fury at the Coalition Government. After all, they took the previous Labour Government’s work on welfare reform, and evolved and shaped it into something which has wreaked havoc in people’s lives.
As my colleague
Lynn said in her blog this week, Westminster rhetoric and attacks on people in poverty have been hugely successful in making welfare out to be a bad word. Public discourse is pitting people against each other and the vote yesterday reinforces that discourse.
I recognise that Labour is changing how it looks at the economy and that it has been vocal about low wage jobs and our flawed housing market (part of the reason why welfare expenditure is increasing), but the vote yesterday sends out quite a different message. It suggests that welfare is not valued politically.
The truth of the matter is that we live in a country where aspects of our welfare state have more or less value depending on what the polls say. We would never cap spending on health, would we?
Are activists right to be so angry? Can Labour continue to claim to be the party which speaks out for people living in poverty and facing the cost of living crisis, when MPs have voted to cap the very benefits which help keep working families afloat? That’s for you to decide.
Last modified on 23 January 2020
