The two best things about Labour – the two reasons for thinking that Keir Starmer may be a reforming prime minister – were Wes Streeting at health and Jon Ashworth at welfare. Both have been prepared to acknowledge the need for reform that the Labour grassroots would find difficult. Streeting, it seems, has survived. But it’s alarming to see Ashworth become one of the reshuffle casualties, replaced by former leadership hopeful Liz Kendall.
Welfare reform is the toughest job in politics, and means taking huge risks with a system that governs (or misgoverns) the lives of millions. Not reforming it means you end up with the disability allowance workload rising by 1,000 a day (which it’s projected to do every day for the next four years). Reforming it, however, means you start to assess a million-odd people for what work they can do, probably enlisting a private company to do so. It’s a massive undertaking. Get it wrong, as is statistically bound to happen, and you end up with bad headlines and a big backlash (or a Ken Loach film). These controversies are hard for Tories to survive, but even harder for a Labour prime minister.
In 1997 Tony Blair famously asked Frank Field to ‘think the unthinkable’ on welfare then fired him when he did so. When disabled protesters chained themselves to parliament’s railings Blair took fright. Gordon Brown moved in with his tax-credit agenda that turned a blind eye to those being economically decommissioned: their place in the workplace was taken by a new breed of immigrants. Reform died. It took years to revive that agenda.
He has for months been making the case for saving lives, not just money
But Ashworth was in the tradition of the Labour reformers. He has for months been making the case for saving lives, not just money. He showed a deep understanding and interest in the labyrinthine mess of the current welfare system. (As opposed to Theresa May, for example, who was given the brief in opposition.) Ashworth is the kind of reformer in the mould of James Purnell, whose reforms the Tories built on. But I did wonder: is it just him? How many others in Labour see welfare the way he does? Could he persuade his party to undertake the high-stakes welfare reform process?
I make no comment on Liz Kendall, who might be just as tough and just as determined. She’s seen to be on the Blairite reforming wing of the party, but it’s unclear if she will be as prepared as Ashworth was to take bullets from her own side in pursuit of a mission that most Labour MPs would rather not undertake. Politically, it’s easier to keep shuffling people on to edge-of-town estates and rebuild the workforce using industrious immigrants.
My hunch is that welfare costs are projected to rise so much that Starmer has no choice but to implement radical reform. Will this be what he told Kendall when he appointed her? If so, we should know from her first proper speech in the job.
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