The joys of simplicity, revealed in the blessings of universal credit

Simplicity is so much to be preferred to complexity, isn’t it?

Britain had a real mess of a system for providing benefits – what other people call social security – to people who need them. To mention just the main ones, there was housing benefit and invalidity benefit and unemployment benefit and, just to confuse everything, even tax credits in employment, to boost the earnings of the low paid.

Who had a right to which? For how long? And under what conditions?

So it made sense to put an end to this chaotic mess. Replace this whole raft of multiple criss-crossing benefits and replace them with just one, tailored to the individual. Why, we could call it universal credit and have it replace all the rest.

Iain Duncan Smith
A remarkable track record. To which he keeps adding

It was the brainchild of one Iain Duncan Smith. He made his name as leader of the Tory Party, taking over after its disastrous general election defeat by Labour in 2001. However, in 2003 he lost a vote of confidence of his MPs, convinced as they were that he could not lead them to success, and resigned. But he refused to go into his long goodnight as he might have done, instead reappearing as the minister responsible for benefits under David Cameron.

You don’t remember Cameron? Don’t worry. He was immensely forgettable. He enjoyed a brief and ill-deserved moment in the limelight as British Prime Minister before returning to the far more merited obscurity from which it’s unfortunate he ever emerged.

In the meantime, Duncan Smith got his chance to introduce universal credit.

A brilliant idea, as I said before.

Except that a brilliant idea in the hands of a Tory Minister, in a government wedded to austerity, is unlikely to look as generous on closer scrutiny as it sounds on the surface. So it turned out with this one. As this enlightened minister made clear in an article for the favourite paper of the Tory party, the Daily Telegraph (or Torygraph as those of us of another persuasion like to call it):

By restoring the incentive to work and ensuring that work always pays, universal credit is the strongest statement of this Government’s commitment to helping people get the security of a good job.

See the sleight of hand? “Incentive to work” is Tory doublespeak for “we’re going to make this so mean that no one could possibly live on it so they’ll be forced to take a job, however dismal”. A “good job” in this context is Toryspeak for “a reduction of one in the unemployment figures”.

Just to avoid any possible doubt, Duncan Smith also explained that “our reforms are forecast to save a total of nearly £50 billion cumulatively across this Parliament.”

Saving money. Always a welcome message for the recipients of state benefits, who know it means a major effort of generosity on the part of government.

Duncan Smith brought to the task of designing universal credit all the flair he’d shown in leading his party.

It’s taken five years to build the system. It’s being trialled right now in several local council areas. The results have been eloquent: there’s been a huge increase in dependence on food charities and in rent arrears. One food bank, according to Patrick Butler in the Guardian has reported a 97% increase in demand.

Meanwhile with that pesky housing benefit out of the way, councils are reporting huge increases in rent arrears. One council, the Guardian again tells us, reports dramatic figures:

Southwark said that although just 12% of its social housing tenants were on universal credit, they have built up £5.8million in rent arrears. The average universal credit household £1,178 in arrears, compared with £8 credit for the average council rent across the borough.

That’s why they call it universal: it spreads joy everywhere. Not just the tenants who can enjoy piling up rent arrears, and celebrate the fact down at their local food bank, but the council who sees its rent income falling.

As Duncan Smith so eloquently put it, he was building “a system that supports people to secure independence for themselves and their families.”

The wonderful thing is that, although he was sacked by Theresa May, our soon-to-be-former Prime Minister who replaced David Cameron (remember him now?) he keeps popping up and speaking out on the subjects he cares about. Most notably, he’s terribly keen on Britain getting out of the European Union. Just the other day, I heard him on the BBC explaining why Britain had nothing to fear from Brexit and everything to hope for.

It’s extraordinary, with his track record, that there are still people out there prepared to listen to him.

And, still more difficult to understand, believe him.

Mustn't take joy in Tory misfortunes. Must we?

Schadenfreude is the despicable emotion which leads us to take pleasure in the suffering of others.

Obviously, we ought to avoid it in all circumstances. At all times. That just has to be our rule.

Still, like all good rules, that one has to have exceptions, doesn’t it? And right up there with the most exceptional has to be the British Tory Party. In particular, those of its members who form the present enlightened government under which we groan. Sorry, prosper.

To be honest, I feel no shame over exulting in their discomfiture. They’re so self-satisfied, so certain of their entitlement to consideration and authority, so used to acting on their whims with complete impunity as to the consequences.

Besides, what’s happening to them is so much more commonly the destiny of the left, and in particular of the Labour Party. If there is one characteristic of a party of the left at any time, it’s that it is always being betrayed. Someone in its ranks is, it’s alleged, a crave backslider or a wild radical who risks derailing the movement in its mission. And that person is hated by someone else.

It’s a long tradition. Told that Nye Bevan, father of the NHS, was his own worst enemy, Ernie Bevin, who had been his ministerial colleague in the post-war Labour government, replied “not while I’m alive he isn’t.”

These internecine feuds rumble on for years. The whole Blair premiership was dominated by conflict between him and his Chancellor of the Exchequer and eventual successor, Gordon Brown. Even now, the conservative press has leaked a list of Labour MPs, drawn up by someone in the party, which categorises them by their loyalty or lack of it to the present leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s not clear to me that drawing up such a list was ever a particularly judicious move. Wasn’t it obvious that someone would leak it? After all, we’re always being betrayed…

It’s exasperating that anyone thought this was a good idea, and what I’d really, really like to suggest is that people stop keeping records about people’s supposed loyalty and, equally, that the people who are perhaps not as loyal as one might wish, learn to put a sock in it and knuckle down and support our present leader. For better or for worse. After all, he’s the only leader we’ve got, and any move we made to replace him by someone else would provoke further bitter feuding that would do no one any favours but the Conservatives.

Besides, quite a lot of us think he’s not such a bad leader, and maybe we ought to give him a chance. 

In any case, it would be fun if those who seem intent on making life difficult for Corbyn, turned their ire – and their fire – instead on the other side. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of having a go at each other, all of us in Labour concentrated on bringing down a Tory government all of us know needs to go?

We can do it. Take Angela Eagle, for instance. The other day she told Parliament:

Last Wednesday the Chancellor stood at that despatch box and delivered what he farcically claimed was: "a budget for the next generation."

What we actually got was a botched budget.

A Budget which has disastrously unravelled in just a few days.

Angela Eagle, putting the boot into an inept Chancellor
flanked by Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell

That’s the kind of thing we want to hear from leading Labour voices: picking up on the ineptitude of the Tories and powerfully, effectively denouncing it. She was helped by the incompetence with which George Osborne handled his hopelessly constructed budget, but it still took talent to wield the hatchet as Eagle did.

Which brings me back to the problems of Cameron’s party. Because as well as Angela Eagle’s comments I was delighted to read this assault:

This is not the way to do government…

I believe [Cameron and Osborne] are losing sight of the direction of travel they should be going...

But these remarks weren’t made by anyone in the Labour Party. They came from a former leader of the Tory Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who dramatically resigned from his position as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last week.

Now, he has an axe to grind. He’s opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU, and his fellow Tories at the top of the party are in favour. His resignation may have been in part to serve the Brexit cause. But it contributes to the sense of disarray in Tory ranks, and that will only increase as the EU referendum approaches. That’s a wedge that Labour should be striving to drive deeper.

Meanwhile, other fissures are also opening up among Tories. Today we learned of the views of a Tory former head teacher and a member of Leicestershire County Council, where he takes a leading role on children’s and family matters. Ivan Ould was reacting to the decision by the government to force all schools to take ‘Academy’ status and therefore leave the control of councils such as Leicestershire’s. He commented:

This seems to be throwing out good practice for the sake of dogma and risking the possibility that standards may fall. I do not believe a system driven by dogma will meet the needs of children.

He’s so right. It’s dogma that drives this government, and centralisation of power: there’s absolutely no need to drive all schools to become Academie – indeed, one of the Academy chains that Cameron identified as exemplary has been placed under investigation for financial irregularities.

It’s dogma, too, that drives the constant obsession with austerity, despite six years of evidence that isn’t delivering growth or even reducing debt.

Taken together, the kind of Opposition Angela Eagle has shown Labour can still produce, and the internal attacks that the likes of Duncan Smith and Ould are launching, suggest that we can after all really do something about this dogmatic, inept government. Which is failing to meet the needs not just of children, but those of all but a tiny minority of the nation.

So I’m doing nothing to restrain my Schadenfreude over the Tories’ woes.