If you are an idler sponging off the state, you have every excuse to feel cheated. Throughout his years in opposition, Keir Starmer gave you every impression that he was on your side. During his Labour leadership election campaign in 2020, he promised to end Universal Credit and replace it with something more generous. In 2021, when Boris Johnson’s government proposed to remove the £20-a-week uplift in benefits, which it had introduced at the beginning of the pandemic, Starmer called a vote to oppose the move, accusing the then government of ‘effectively turning on the poorest in our society’. Shortly before last year’s general election, he agreed with the Big Issue that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) assessment process was ‘dehumanising’ and told readers: ‘There will be no return to austerity with a Labour government. We’ll have a decade of national renewal instead.’
These are very different messages from the one he had for Labour MPs on Monday night when he said of the benefits system: ‘That’s unsustainable, it’s indefensible and it is unfair.
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