By this time next week, Keir Starmer will be a distant memory and his successor Andy Burnham, described as "all vibe and no substance," will become the country's first Prime Minister to wear a black or blue T-shirt under his jacket. Labour MPs are giddy with excitement, skipping off into the summer recess convinced this change will turn around their party's fortunes. However, the reality is that until Labour sorts out its stance on welfare benefits, the same doom loop of higher taxes and economic misery will continue.
Labour's shift from workers to benefits class
Esther McVey, writing for the Express, laments how sad it is to see a once proud party, founded primarily to represent the working classes, shift away from representing people who go out to work in order to be the party of the benefits class. In just two years, Labour has crushed work with ever higher taxes and presided over 8.4 million people now claiming Universal Credit as of January, up by a staggering one million from the year before. The cost of the welfare bill under Labour has surged to £333 billion, more than the government now raises in Income Tax.
Indeed, by the time Labour took office after 14 years in the wilderness, it had made a conscious decision to prioritise welfare recipients over workers. That is why they attacked farmers and family businesses, some of the hardest working people in the country, with a tax policy to destroy them. They increased employers' national insurance contributions, making it so much more expensive to keep people in work that almost 200,000 employees were forced off the payroll and into unemployment, an entirely predictable outcome.
Free childcare for benefits families draws criticism
The latest absurdity, according to McVey, comes from anti-Education Minister Bridget Phillipson, who proposed providing 30 free hours of childcare to families on benefits, worth an average of £7,500 per year. McVey asks: "Why on earth do unemployed people on benefits require free childcare? This initiative was meant to ensure parents could go out to work, but for Labour these days they target everything at the benefits class, not at workers."
Burnham's welfare stance under scrutiny
So will Burnham return Labour to its working-class roots and tackle this welfare explosion? McVey argues there isn't a snowball's chance in hell. In fact, early indications are that he wants to increase welfare, not reduce it. One of his main policy advisors, Labour MP Miatta Fahnbulleh, is as hard left as they come and supports a basic benefit for all, forcing yet more into state dependency with an unaffordable bill for taxpayers. And Burnham's solution is for even higher taxes on workers and wealth creators, and yet more borrowing.
Only Labour MPs think that the government has failed because it isn't left-wing enough, and so they have decided to do the equivalent of putting Frank Gallagher from Shameless and Jim Royle from The Royle Family in charge of welfare and benefits. McVey concludes: "What could possibly go wrong?"
