Milliband must argue housing benefit policy in the round

Ed Milliband and his team are right to home in on the housing benefit policy Cameron is promoting. Of course he is; it’s terrible that thousands of people are in danger of being moved out to goodness knows where. And if anyone should think that’s scaremongering, note that some London LA are already booking the bed and breakfast accommodation far from their own London Borough.

But the arguments must be put with care and in-the-round.

Labour had tried to address the welfare bill, but with only limited success. We must be prepared with some solutions of our own, lest we be seen as simply attacking for the sake of attacking.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact, either, that the reason rents are so high is because landlords are making them high. A side-effect, if you like, of the free market . . . ‘benefit will pay the rents so let’s see what rents we can get away with.’

In addition, the public have to a huge extent taken on board the idea that people on benefit are scroungers living in large houses most of us couldn’t afford to live in. Milliband and his team must have a strategy to overcome this, to education the pubic to the truth (and not shy away from the fact that some people are milking the system.)

Cameron’s policy has popular support - almost certainly the main reason he won’t budge from it (Tory polling will indicate this.)

For us to win the argument will be hard to do - we don’t own newspapers. But unless this issue is taken on in the round we’re in danger of scoring a home-goal. We have to be smart.

I'm not saying the nasty party is back . . .

In his final conference speech, David Cameron invoked the spirit of Kitchener (which is synonymous, in the circumstances, with the spirit of Churchill). ‘Your country needs you.’ What a cheek. ‘We’re all in this together,’ the millionaire says, ‘Go out and do your voluntary work - your country needs you.’ Interestingly, it didn’t get a warm response, perhaps even his delegates think they’re doing quite enough already, thank you.

I’ve argued before that if all his volunteers get going (civic gardens, volunteer libraries . . . ) it won’t be the well-healed that’ll suffer, nor the well paid managers, but the low-paid librarians, LA gardeners and the like.

Now put this alongside the welfare cap - around 500 gbp per family. There is some argument about the fairness of this; it runs along the lines of ‘If you’re on benefit you shouldn’t have so many children.’ This may be harsh, but, for some, there is a cruel logic behind it. Precisely the reason, of course, that the Tories use it. But it’s not the true picture.

The real problem is that people have their families (large or small), then, possibly out of the blue, are made redundant or lose their jobs. What are they supposed to do with their children then? Put them back?! The capped figure includes housing benefit, so what happens to a family in rented accommodation in central London or other areas of the South East? Let’s take our clue from one of the delegates at the Tory conference; she said, ‘They’ll have to move house.’

And the final, never mentioned, element of this . . . we can all see that the policy of cuts Cameron and Osborne are promoting will certainly raise levels of unemployment.

The Conservatives are going to force people on to benefits . . . and then punish them for being there.

I’m not saying the ‘nasty party’ is back; I’m saying it never really went away, just hidden by a bit of PR camouflage.