Keir Starmer is a weak Prime Minister and parliament has proved it can’t condone any reduction in public spending. This will end very badly, says Simon Clarke

The collapse of Labour’s plans for welfare reform marks the end of its first year in government – and perhaps the end of any kind of serious reforming ambition.

“The most expensive poverty in the world” was how Fraser Nelson described the scandal of the welfare system at the end of the New Labour years. For many people in 2010, a benefits trap meant they were quite rationally better off on welfare than in work, or than by choosing to work more hours.

The introduction of Universal Credit helped to fix this, and it stands alongside Michael Gove’s education reforms as the most important domestic policy success of the last Conservative government. But Covid blew the doors off – and then some. The progress made in reducing welfare dependency during the 2010s went into sharp reverse, in part because of much less exacting testing requirements. More........

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