Why do the Tory devils have all the best tunes?
January 27th, 2012By any standards the IDS so-called welfare reforms are extremely harsh, victimising the poorest for the follies of the ultra-rich bankers, bashing families with disabled children, pressurising the unemployed with over-the-top work capability tests into jobs that don’t exist (there are only 400,000 vacancies for 2.64 million jobless to fill), and forcing some 80,000 families to decant because housing benefit cuts mean the rent is no longer affordable. So how do you sell a nasty, vicious package like this? The solution the Tories have come up with is to create one superficially plausible idea and then repeat it over and over again to prove that the whole package is OK. ’Nobody should get more in housing benefit than the average-paid hard-working employee gets from a week’s hard grind at work’ – who could possibly disagree with that? A lot of people if they were told the truth. But that’s not the point: it’s the Tories’ technique of under-the-radar attack that needs to be copied and used against them, because they are the ones who are far more vulnerable.
As it happens, the £26,000 housing benefit cap will do a lot of damage which cannot be defended. It will push over 130,000 more children into poverty as well as pushing down a great many more even further below the poverty line (which is 60% of median household income). And the IFS have calculated that the government’s welfare cuts will ratchet up child poverty by a third of a million. Not as innocent or ‘reasonable’ as Tory propaganda makes them out to be.
But fastening on one killer point is a technique the Labour Party should use aggressively itself. Here are a few examples:
* The richest 1,000 persons in Britain could pay off the entire budget deficit themselves alone: so why are they paying nothing?
* Tory austerity hasn’t cut the deficit at all: it’s increased borrowing by £157bn.
* Labour didn’t overspend at all: it was the bankers’ bailout that ballooned the deficit by £120bn.
* A million jobs could be created, without any increase in borrowing, by taxing the ultra-rich.
* It costs £8-10bn a year keeping a million on the dole: why nolt for the same money create half a million jobs?
January 28th, 2012 at 11:42 am
The amusing thing is their right wing papers lap it up and refuse to report on the genuine misery it causes. I know my red lines in pitching to them – about 60% of the newsworthy stories I run into.
The only way such disgusting message gets pushed is through a willing media. As a Labour man you’re part of the wider issue – you need partisan message to get your word out. I doubt you’d ask Leveson to consider balance in the print media message (which as a broadcast journalist by training I know all too well).
Sadly 2/3rds of the print media doesn’t promote your voice so you must kowtow to the jack boot wearing editorial staff of the other side – or publish on blogs such as this.
It is the print media that is at fault – otherwise this voluminous Tory horse crap wouldn’t be promulgated.
January 28th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
The question is why are the labour leadership not getting out these very valid points?