The country faces grave and deep-seated problems that only bold – and expensive – policies can address
When Keir Starmer was just the lowly leader of the opposition, he made one of his themes “sticking-plaster politics”. It was a critique of the way that Westminster tends to focus intensely on something for a short while, before flitting off to another crisis and solving nothing along the way. It made a lot of sense for Starmer to complain about short-termism in politics: the Tories were bouncing from one problem to another, and, besides, every leader of the opposition likes to opine worthily about broken politics from the convenient distance of not being in power and having to fix it. Well, now he is in power, and is faced with all the temptations to leave the Band-Aids firmly in place.
There is no department that is a better example of what happens when you have a sticking-plaster approach than Work and Pensions. It responds to breakdowns elsewhere: long-term sickness driven by even longer NHS waiting lists, insecure employment and skills shortages. If the health service isn’t treating people in a timely fashion, they end up out of work, often with their problems and quality of life deteriorating. If the Treasury isn’t creating the conditions for economic growth, the out-of-work benefits bill stays high. If Education and Business aren’t ensuring that workers have the skills that make bosses want to hire them rather than recruit from abroad, the DWP picks up the bill. One Labour figure describes it as “the bucket into which all the failures of other departments are poured”.
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