Plastered around Westminster this Easter were adverts for the Tower of London. ‘The perfect place for troublemakers – pre-book now,’ the poster read. ‘Members go free.’ So too – near enough – do those on Universal Credit (UC).

Easter-holiday treats can be expensive for hard-working families. For those on benefits they’re a breeze. A trip to the Tower of London for a family of four costs £111. But if one of the parents is on UC (or a long list of other benefits), a £107 saving is applied and the whole family can get in for just £4. Visit the Tower’s café for fish and chips and UC bags you a half-price meal (£16.95 for the rest of us).

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If looking at animals is more attractive than looking for a job, the Zoological Society offers those on UC an £82 discount to London Zoo, reducing the family ticket from £108 to £26. It’s the same story across London’s most popular tourist attractions: HMS Belfast (£68 discount), St Paul’s Cathedral (£61), Westminster Abbey (£60), the Cutty Sark (£54), Kew Gardens (£45), the London Transport Museum (£44) and the Science Museum’s Wonderlab (£27).

It gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘leisure class’, and this benefits bonanza is hugely popular – with those on welfare. Less so for the rest of us, who are paying for it.

This is not the Britain Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves pretend they live in. ‘I believe in a Britain founded on contribution,’ the Chancellor declared at last year’s Labour conference. Her vision, she concluded, was of a country ‘defiant in an uncertain world and powered by the contribution of its people’.

Fast-forward six months and that uncertain world has arrived. The defiance, though, is missing. A dispirited Treasury now joins the OECD and IMF in warning that the UK could be among the worst-hit nations in the world by red-hot inflation and recession. Households will be squeezed.

What is certain, though, is which people this government will protect. And it won’t be those who pay their dues. Instead, Britain’s shrinking working middle finds itself trapped in a vice. Above, sitting prim, are asset-rich pensioners (a quarter of whom are millionaires) who are protected from and by every government decision. Below are those living on welfare, increasingly insulated from rising costs and shielded from hardship.

Welfare advice websites are awash with listicles of the top ten days out for those on Universal Credit

Welfare advice websites are awash with listicles of the top ten days out for those on Universal Credit

Benefits claimants are now the real focus of Labour’s attention, advocacy and largesse, as the Treasury’s response to this latest crisis shows. Having correctly identified that a Liz Truss-style subsidy-for-all approach to household energy costs – forecast to climb by £332 each – is unaffordable, Reeves instead favours a ‘targeted approach’. And those singled out for any spare cash? People on benefits. This is partly because Whitehall prefers........

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