The Tories are radical again

Cameron means business on welfare: the Tories are the radicals again

3 November 2007

David Cameron is about to take up the issue that Margaret Thatcher didn’t dare touch and that defeated Tony Blair at the height of his powers: welfare reform. Fraser Nelson explains how the Conservative leader intends to bring the American welfare revolution to this country, challenge Labour on its home turf and make poverty history in Britain.

He first slipped this out in a television interview in Blackpool, and then repeated it for good measure in his conference hall speech. The invocation of Wisconsin — a state in America’s upper Midwest — would have passed over the head of most people in the Winter Gardens, let alone in the country. The word triggers few images, if any: snowploughs, badgers and perhaps bicycle lanes. But to policy wonks, it is the home of the most aggressive and successful welfare reform programme the world has ever seen — which became the template for Bill Clinton’s federal reform. And this was what Mr Cameron seemed, quite explicitly, to sign up to.

Even now, members of the shadow Cabinet are not entirely sure if he misspoke. Didn’t Tony Blair try all this in 1999, and wasn’t he forced to drop the strategy after disabled people chained themselves to the No. 10 railings in protest? Isn’t welfare reform so toxic an issue that even Baroness Thatcher didn’t dare to touch it? And why, precisely, would the famously risk-averse David Cameron, who does not dare touch the health service, decide to go straight for the root canal of the British welfare state?

Yet the debate on welfare has changed fundamentally since Mr Blair threw his hands up in despair. Now, there is much wider discontent with the benefits system and the jobless total. It emerged this week that, since 1997, most new jobs have been taken (or created) by immigrants. When New Labour started, there were 5.7 million on out-of-work benefits. Now, the figure is 5.4 million — hardly any change. ‘British jobs for British people,’ Mr Brown’s most fatuous slogan, is, as it happens, the precise opposite of what Labour has done.

So Mr Cameron has come to believe that the connected issues of poverty, welfare dependency and idleness, far from being hostile territory for Conservatives, is terrain where they can take on and defeat Mr Brown. Welfare reform, he believes, encapsulates both the weaknesses of Mr Brown’s ideas and the strengths of his own. It is an area of policy where, he believes, the hitherto vague Cameroon themes of ‘general wellbeing’ and ‘social responsibility’ can be made vivid, dynamic and relevant to people’s day-to-day lives. And it is an area of policy where he can offer a genuine and palpable alternative to Labour’s failure.

The first task will be to highlight Labour’s dismal record. Mr Cameron is slowly grasping that he who chooses the terms of debate tends to win. After 18 months of using Mr Brown’s language (saying ‘investment’ rather than ‘spending’) he is setting his own terms. And when welfare policy is measured according to the level of joblessness — as opposed to ‘equality’ — the picture becomes devastating.

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Julio Juncal

November 8th, 2007 8:33pm Report this comment

Mr Nelson says: "This is no accident. It was the American Left which grasped that traditional welfare was actually locking people into poverty, and decided to fight it not by raising incomes through benefits but by cutting welfare rolls." Can you substantiate that statement? The American Left, as we know it, fought tooth and nail against welfare reform under a Republican-dominated Congress and a Democratic President.

Richard Prior

January 8th, 2008 6:53pm Report this comment

David Cameron should go out himself and do some real work for 5 Pounds per hour. Mr Cameron lives far away from reality on cloud Nr.17 Nobody should vote for this stupid and arrogant person

E. Meller

January 8th, 2008 7:04pm Report this comment

So jobseekers should now accept any "suitable" job, OK, but what is a suitable job, you cant put out an IT engineer to clean the streets,or a musician to become an IT enineer. But that is exactly what will happen if private companys get paid to bring people back to work. Mr Cameron wants to rob the jobseekers and give the money to private companys instead. One wonders if Mr. Cameron will have shares in these companys. And regarding "suitable" jobs, I think a suitable job for Mr Cameron would be to clean public toilets.

Jake

June 1st, 2009 8:10pm Report this comment

So if someone is ill will they be forced to work? Many in America have to work whilst still receiving chemo or on dialysis etc. We already have the lowest levels of welfare in Europe and Labour have launched a sustained attack on the system. If Cameron is going to go further God help anyone who loses their job or becomes ill.
Finally if you deny people benefits what do you think will happen? They will resort to crime - or starve. Most wont want to do that so crime it is. Our estates will become a seething mass of drug abuse and crime on a scale like those huge social housing projects in America.
To make people work for their benefits is a disgrace - they should at least get minimum wage if doing a job. This will stop me voting Tory I am afraid.

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