The battle of the closed blinds. Ah yes, I remember it well. It was 2012, austerity was tightening its jaws, and a fresh-faced young Chancellor named George Osborne was about to set out his view on the benefits system.

Addressing his party’s conference, Mr Osborne asked delegates: "Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next-door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits?"

It would have been a rum thing for anyone to say, far less the son of a fabric and furnishings dynasty who had enjoyed every privilege in life and would go on to relish many more. I did not think anyone could, or would want to, beat it for sheer knuckle-headedness.

But step forward Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall, and an assorted band of useful idiots from within Labour who are on a mission to stop disabled people bleeding the state dry when they could be working.

One possible place for the government to make savings is in disability benefits (Image: free) Not that Ms Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will put it that way when she sets out her plans. The furthest she has gone so far is saying some people are “taking the mickey” and claiming benefits when they could be working.

Her boss was a little bolder when addressing Labour MPs on Monday night, telling them that sickness benefits were costing a fortune (£70 billion a year by 2030) but the system wasn’t working. It was a “worst of all........

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