Difficult Decisions, To Fight Who?

Welfare U-turn shows Starmer puts party ahead of country, writes Jamila Robertson in CityAM.

The Conservatives are the only political party able to say they take the country’s £100bn debt bill and £65bn welfare bill seriously, says Jamila Robertson

We have heard the government assert time and again, that it is they who are taking the difficult decisions. Almost a year on, with inflation up from 2% to 3.5%, unemployment rising to 4.6% and growth a fantasy, it seems their decisions have been politically inconvenient and fruitless.

Anyone who has knocked on a door in the past year will have been confronted by a depleted electorate resigned to perpetual disappointment by whichever “lot” is in government at the time. This despondency goes some way to explaining the rising appeal of protest parties like Reform, the Lib Dems, Greens and a host of independents. You might think that so royally disappointed by not seeing a glimpse of the “change” they voted for, they’d abandon politics altogether, and whilst many have, (last year's general election turnout of 59.7% was the lowest since 2001, compared with the 83.5% heyday of 1950), it is with one last roll of the dice that they look outside of the top two parties to give someone else a go.

Perhaps tired of being reproached by the party faithful, and staring down the barrel of polls that predict most of the cabinet will lose their seats to Reform, it looks like Keir Starmer will be picking party over country, after all.

The Chancellor confirmed this week that Keir Starmer has buckled under political pressure to restore the Winter Winter Fuel Allowance (WFA). It comes amid weeks of speculation that under pressure from the left of his party, flanked by Angela Rayner on manoeuvres and Reform’s Nigel Farage calling for the abolition of the two-child benefit cap and the restoration of the WFA, Starmer would u-turn.

With promises such as £300 savings on energy bills broken, manifesto pledges not to raise National Insurance spun into a matter of semantics and surprises like the removal of WFA and Inheritance Tax on farmers hitting the people who were assured they’d be protected, Labour is looking for a quick win – and it seems it’s welfare.

Read the article here: https://www.cityam.com/welfare-u-turns-show-starmer-puts-party-ahead-of-country/