‘WE’RE the Labour Party. The clue is in the title.'

From time to time, elected representatives of the People’s Party will dip into their party playbook searching for a witty slogan to justify their latest round of benefit cuts.

They almost always end up here – singing the same auld sang about work being the difference between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

Back in January, Sir Keir was bragging to The Sun that he had “the balls to take an axe to Britain’s bloated benefits bill” promising to “be ruthless with cuts if that’s what’s necessary”.

Asked how he would respond if any of his MPs turned out to be “squeamish” about further ­immiserating ­already ­precarious and marginalised ­people, the PM responded “I love fights”, comparing the Government’s battle to take money off disabled people to the titanic ­struggle to root Corbynism out of the ­Labour ­Party. Who would true valour see, let him come hither.

This weekend, someone in the Labour Government – presumably the Treasury, or Number 10, or Liz Kendall, or one of the little elves and sprites who do her bidding – decided to leak the Starmer government’s social security plans to ITV News.

The headlines already look stark, with cuts totalling £6 billion being in contemplation. The Starmer regime hoping to win political capital by promising yet more crackdowns is the least surprising ­political development of the year as is the ­suggestion that willingness to work is the main moral faultline Labour wishes to draw through Britain’s benefit budget. So far, so ­unoriginal.

Since the late 1990s, UK governments of successive hues have helped embed the character of the benefits cheat and the underclass of the idle poor in public ­consciousness. This idée fixe has been used to promote cultures of suspicion and justify the creation of overtly hostile state bureaucracies – armed with sanctions and conditions and surveillance and official humiliation rituals for anyone courageous or desperate enough to seek support from what we laughably describe as our social safety net. The cruelty is the selling point.

But one of the striking features of ­political debate around benefits in Britain is that it remains........

© Herald Scotland