Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), you are wrong. There is a spectacle more ridiculous than the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality: it’s a government suddenly discovering a moral mission.
Ever since the Budget and its messy aftermath, Sir Keir Starmer has been invoking Labour’s “moral mission” in connection with welfare reform. He has claimed that “under the Tories”, the welfare bill not only increased by £88 billion, but “they left children too poor to eat.”
The mission was belatedly found down the back of Labour’s sofa to justify another gouging of the already hard-pressed middle-income taxpayers of Middle Britain. On top of the £40 billion last year, last week the mansplained Chancellor came back for £26 billion more.
Putting the “rat” into rationale, both Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister have been stressing the money was for children. “I am proud we scrapped the two-child limit. I am proud we’re lifting over a half a million children out of poverty,” declared Sir Keir on Monday, before invoking his own childhood trauma – the landline being cut off. (Harder to arrange the flute lessons, perhaps?)
His moral indignation on behalf of Britain’s youngest is late onset. In July 2024, seven Labour MPs lost the whip by voting against the SNP’s amendment to lift the two-child limit. Back then, No.10 and No.11 agreed: raising the cap would cost at least an unfunded £2.5 billion and there was no “silver bullet” to ending child poverty.
Taking from some families via higher taxes to give other families increased benefits is a binary political choice being gussied up as a moral mission. Invoking children, especially children allegedly too poor to eat, is moral blackmail; Labour’s use of hungry children as a human shield is a blatant attempt to shame critics into silence.
Since the Budget, however, all the government has achieved is to highlight the national divide between “Alarm Clock Britain” (all credit to Reform) and Benefits Britain. It is clear whose side ministers are on. Yet again, Labour’s contempt for the “working class” shines through.
Championing one side, along with the Labour, is the well-staffed Child Poverty Action Group, This “trusted voice” suggests “Child poverty is higher in larger families.” It states 350,000 children will be lifted out of poverty thanks to the cap going – well adrift of the Prime Minister’s claim. Who’s correct?
Yorkshire bricklayer Don Daniels is on the other side. His TikTok clip of grafting in sub-zero temperatures after a 6am wake-up has gone viral. Some days he wants to give up but, as he points out, there are “people on benefits depending on me.”
Children, of course, are not responsible for their feckless parents. However well-meaning intentions might be, making skiving not striving doesn’t, er, work. Encouraging welfare dependency helps no one. Labour forgets that workers like Don are not the state’s serfs.
The Department for Education recently put out a video clip applauding its free Breakfast Clubs. Thrilled to be relieved of the burden of feeding their own children, parents look forward to having a lie-in and going for coffee. One mother says she can’t keep track of whether her child has eaten – for which the PM will probably blame the Tories.
Few have bothered to ask how much these “free” Breakfast Clubs cost or who is profiting. The Department’s something-for-nothing culture is reflected by grabby boss Bridget Phillipson seizing freebie Taylor Swift tickets as soon as she got her feet under the desk. But just as £522 of hospitality is “hard to turn down”, so too is breakfast at the taxpayers’ expense.
Along with the moral mission, the existence of social housing properties worth £2m or more is another Budget surprise. The Chancellor is exempting them from the forthcoming mansion tax. Or, as James Cleverly put it: “People living in expensive properties on the taxpayers’ dime will be able to dodge the new charge.”
Using hungry kids – hungry because of rubbish parenting, rather than the Tories – is emotionally manipulative. Yet whilst the Prime Minister and his Chancellor have deliberately put themselves on the moral high ground in connection with children, somehow they happily wave through abortion up to birth (i.e. infanticide) and puberty blocking-related medical experiments on youngsters.
In this context, talk of their moral mission is exposed for the vacuous cant it is.
The Budget has done the country a favour (if not financially, unless we live on Benefits Street): it has created clear dividing lines in public policy-making. Britain’s political parties must decide whether they are on the side of working wealth-makers like Don, or the wealth-takers. To govern is to choose.
