Tories must now come clean about where their £12bn of welfare cuts will be made – UK Politics – UK – The Independent
What utter buffalo.
If these senior Tories don’t want to implement £12 billion of cuts, then the answer’s simple: Let them refuse.
And isn’t it strange how David Cameron wants to call his Conservatives a “One Nation” party, now that Ed Miliband, who took the slogan for Labour, has left the scene?
When the Conservative manifesto confirmed plans to cut £12bn from welfare, some senior Tories thought the party would never have to implement them.
They did not expect to win an overall majority and knew that the Liberal Democrats would accept only about £3bn of social security cuts in another coalition.
There was a natural deal to be done under which David Cameron backed down from £12bn of welfare savings and, in return, Nick Clegg let him have an in/out referendum on Europe. George Osborne could have filled the hole by raising taxes for the better off – and blaming it on the Lib Dems.
But now the Prime Minister and Chancellor have no excuses and must trim welfare by £12bn. It will not be easy.
And it could revive memories of the “nasty party” just when Mr Cameron, with an eye on the 2020 election, is relaunching the Tories as a “One Nation” party which champions working people.
It sickens me that Camoron has “stolen” the “One Nation” motto. One Nation Tories have always been the ones with a bit of social conscience, an awareness that a country is the sum of ALL its people, and that a government should respond to the needs and interests of all the people, or at the very least, pay lip service to that ethic. Camoron and his cronies already spent their last term in office being the most divisive regime in living memory, despite the efforts of the LibDems to reduce the savagery a small amount. Now back with a majority the Blood Beast Terror s unleashed. As usual, Camoron’s WORDS and ACTIONS are polar opposites.
“Revive memories of the Nasty Party” – the memories never ever went away.
My bet would be an attack on housing benefit. In the Red Book published prior to Osborne’s first budget a 10% cut in the housing benefit of everybody unemployed for over one year was pencilled in only to be quashed by the Liberal Democrats. This would have been an awful indiscriminate cut to those unlucky enough to be long-term unemployed, many of whom would be in their fifties and sixties already doing their best to find a job: this punitive measure would have been extremely unfair since rather than losing 10% Jobseeker’s Allowance (which would hit everybody on the same rate of JSA equally) it would also hit people suffering the same circumstances differently since the cut would be bigger (in cash terms) in expensive areas (London, Cornwall) than cheaper areas.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Tories cut housing benefit across the board for all claimants. Or maybe they’ll crucify unemployed recipients who already may be hit by the Bedroom Tax AND have to pay 25% of their Council Tax AND fund their job seeking (phone, computer, internet, stationery, stamps, transport) out of their Jobseeker’s Allowance (max rate £73.10 per week). How such people will be able to survive if they are also expected to subsidise their rents from already strained-to-breaking meagre out of work benefits is beyond me.
To me it looks impossible.
Or perhaps Osborne will extend the single non-self-contained room housing benefit limit, currently restricted to the under 35s, to the older unemployed jacking it up to 45 or 50, say.
God alone knows.
But as housing benefit accounts for something like 18% of social security I would bet my life that this budget will be one that the Tories will try to attack and strip to the bone.
How can he be a one nation PM when us Scots voted SNP?