Labour’s welfare worries exposed by one cheeky headline. The Tories should exploit this

The Telegraph carries a story under the title ‘Labour: We’ll scrap benefits for under 25s’. This has sent Labour supporters into mild panic. The party’s welfare spokesman, Rachel Reeves has said:

‘This is not and will not be our policy.’

‘It’s not our plan.’

‘It is totally not my position!’

Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List, the grassroots website, says: ‘That all sounds pretty clear to me.’ While George Eaton of the New Statesman, who is close to the Labour leadership, has made some calls, and concluded: ‘Is Labour planning to scrap benefits for under-25s? [T]here is a definitive answer: no.’

So there you have it. The leadership and its supporters in the media have spent most of the morning clarifying the party line on welfare for the under-25. But this exercise was not for the benefit of Telegraph readers; it was to reassure the wider Labour movement.

The Telegraph’s readers would have known from the article’s stand-first that Reeves et al might be considering a report by the left of centre think-tank, the IPPR, which suggests that ‘only those [young people] in “purposeful” training or carrying out an “intensive” job search would be eligible’ for a means tested youth allowance worth £56.80, the same amount as the jobseeker’s allowance. The article also notes that Reeves is wary of means testing benefits, presumably because tests undermine universality. Finally, the article mentions Labour’s intention to offer unemployed youngsters a jobs guarantee. To which a reasonable question is: how?

So, all of this hullaballoo has been caused by one slightly cheeky headline. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Labour knows it is vulnerable on welfare reform, vulnerable from within. The leadership accepts the need for reform, but feels that its base is reluctant, sceptical or recalcitrant. Tory tacticians ought to exploit this tension at every available opportunity: if Ed Miliband is the weakling they claim him to be (in their interminable press releases), he won’t have the balls to drag his party into the 21^st century.