For a government that regularly tells us that it has “a long term economic plan”, it is surprising that the chancellor George Osborne is to have an “emergency budget” on 8 July. But the biggest surprises will be reserved for many of those who voted Conservative in May for an unspecified package of welfare cuts, because it is they who will be the most affected.
That Osborne, that most political of political operators, is to hold another budget so soon after his last one and so early into the new parliament should be no surprise to anyone. There are a number of key reasons why he is doing it:
1) His only real “long term economic plan” is to shrink the size of the state. It has little to do with economics and everything to do with ideology. The continuing fall out from the world economic crash of 2008 gives him cover to carry on slashing. This, he feels, is his best chance.
2) Getting the bad news out of the way quickly. Chancellors of all parties like to get the “bad news” out of the way as quickly as possible and Osborne will be keener than most to do it now so that we are more likely to forget the bad bits when he starts handing out tax bribes from 2019 onwards, just in time for the next general elections.
3) Doing it under cover of the summer. By an astonishing coincidence, parliament’s summer recess begins just two weeks after Osborne’s “emergency budget”. With no parliament actually sitting with people on their holidays, Osborne hopes to get the bad news out there only for us to forget about it when the schools break up.
4) Labour, as the main opposition party, is still reeling after its disastrous election defeat and will not provide serious opposition to the plans, nor any kind of alternative.
Ramping up the rhetoric in today’s Sunday Times, Osborne and DWP Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, refer to the welfare system as being “crackers”. Both men have form with this kind of thing, trying for the last five years to present the argument about welfare as being between strivers and skivers. Strivers are those who “do the right thing and want to get on” and skivers are those who are on benefits; any benefits. Any benefits and all benefits.
The “tough on welfare” line obviously played out well with 36.9% of the electorate back in May. They would surely not have elected a government that was hellbent on massive welfare cuts if they had not supported cuts and cuts is that they will get. Osborne and Duncan Smith were not honest enough to tell the public what a Tory only government would look like and the subservient media, which sadly these days includes the BBC, concluded it was not worth bothering to find out just where these cuts would be. Now these cuts are coming and they will hurt some people who were not expecting it at all.
Many benefits define us as a civilised society. I think in particularly of disability and carers benefits, as well as tax credits. My experience in life and at work has taught me that far from having a nation of scroungers and skivers, we have in our country a legion of carers who look after some of the most vulnerable in society. Their benefits are not excessively generous and I would define someone who wished to take away or cut the benefits of someone who was terminally ill or severely disabled as without a heart or conscience. Tax credits – and make no mistake: tax credits are benefits and nothing more – exist primarily to support those in work, low paid work. If the government does not take action to raise wages whilst cutting tax credits, it will represent a significant attack on the working poor. Yes, I know we have not yet been told just what benefits are being cut, but if Child Benefit is to stay – and Cameron was quite clear about this – and pensioner benefits are to be maintained big cuts have to take place elsewhere. They are bound to go after the poor and the sick. If you voted for big cuts to welfare and then found yourself having big cuts to your welfare payments, then don’t blame me.
Osborne is Robin Hood in reverse. He will always take from the poor to give to the rich. Already, the historic reduction in child poverty is now in reverse and since the Tories/Lib Dems came to power an additional 200,000 children are in now poverty. Osborne believes in trickle-down economics where wealth will eventually seep down from the top to those at the bottom. Wealth? What wealth? Millions are on the minimum wage, millions are on zero hour contracts, millions are on both. What we have in Britain is institutionalised low pay, sometimes topped up by tax credits.
Add to the attack on welfare, a further sustained assault on the public services on which, yes, ordinary people depend, and you see the beginning of a twin-pronged attack on working people, or should I say working class people, with a good few middle class people thrown in.
Slashed local authority budgets will impact on vital services, as will the wholesale cuts to departmental budgets. Britain will be a very different place by 2020 and some services will be beyond saving.
It is the attitude to the word welfare that bothers me. Welfare is almost a swear word in the newspapers, but within it are the safeguards that care for the people of our land. It is a myth that there is an army of benefit fraudsters, although it is a problem that the government has not so much addressed as given up on. Cameron and co care so much about benefit fraud they have decided that most of it isn’t worth investigating. One thing the Tories are very good at is spin. Another is being economical with the truth.
If the slash and burn Tory policies shortly to be announced don’t affect you, then please don’t celebrate the fact that they will impact terribly on others. Otherwise, Thatcher was right and there really is no such thing as society.
