Labour has two problems with welfare. On the one hand the public don't trust them at all—it's as big an issue for the party as immigration and economic competence. On the other, Labour have no idea what they actually believe in—they have no analysis of work, poverty and income. That made them a target last week for George Osborne and it has made them incoherent ever since.
Unusually, there is a simple straightforward political response to these twin challenges. It’s just not the one that Harriet Harman has articulated since the Budget (saying the Labour should listen to the voters on welfare and not simply oppose Tory reforms), hence the massive row inside the party. Consider the counter-factual for a moment. Had Ed Miliband stayed as leader to take the punishment of the difficult first couple of years of opposition, think how different the Budget response would have been. We'd have heard Miliband welcome the conversion of George Osborne to the cause of the Living Wage—rejoicing over the sinner that repenteth. The country would have been left in no doubt about the back-flip performed by the Tories. The reasonable, understated Miliband would have been in overdrive and Osborne would have been on the ropes.
That is still an option open to Labour. And it is a deep frustration to see an open goal being missed. Time and again. It has come to something when the most powerful criticism of the unfairness of the Budget comes from the Economist and the Financial Times, fine newspapers though they are. The point of politics is always the purpose not the process, yet again and again politicians—even experienced ones—can be distracted. In magic it is called misdirection, in politics it is the "see the shiny, dancing monkey" syndrome. Attention is drawn to the surprise so that the substance remains unexamined.
Labour was spooked by the Tories embracing the Living Wage. It's a symptom of PBTS—Post Blair Traumatic Syndrome. Every time the Tories adopt a Labour policy the Labour leadership abandons it thinking it has now become a Tory one when, in reality, they should swagger about winning the battle of ideas. It's the Tories who should be spooked. A Conservative Chancellor is ordering private companies in a free market to raise wage rates. What next, instructions on dividend payments? And Osborne is doing this when he has received evidence that this will destroy jobs—the OBR's report said that 60,000 jobs will go if the Minimum Wage is raised to this level.
This is the core issue—work, and making work pay. And it is where Labour should be focusing. In politics, as in life, the best form of attack is, well, attack. The Tories say they want to continue what Labour started. Labour should take them at their word and then ask them to prove it. Osborne says he wants more people to get into work, for that work to pay and for child poverty to be reduced. Well, if that is so, he's going about it the wrong way according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, whose post Budget analysis suggests that three million families will lose an average of £1,000 per year.
Labour should be holding the Tories to account on the facts—and using every opportunity to do so. They should stand firm on the ground where the public agrees with Labour—the best form of welfare for people of working age is work. They need to ruthlessly expose the hypocrisy of George Osborne, who says one thing—"I want to make work pay"—and then does the exact opposite—pledging a permanent pay cut for millions. I don't know, and I don't really care. What I do know is that Osborne won't pay the the political price until the Labour party stops being embarrassed about Blair's centrist legacy and celebrates—and more urgently—learns from it.
