Ok does this sound familiar... in 1998 just after winning an election with a huge majority Labour produced a Green Paper on welfare reform. Tony Blair tasked its author Frank Field with "thinking the unthinkable" and abandoning some of the founding principles of the welfare state... 🧵 - ThreadSky

captainlibatron.bsky.social • 15 days ago

Ok does this sound familiar... in 1998 just after winning an election with a huge majority Labour produced a Green Paper on welfare reform. Tony Blair tasked its author Frank Field with "thinking the unthinkable" and abandoning some of the founding principles of the welfare state... 🧵

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hollybrigstocke.bsky.social•15 days ago

I never did get the deification of Frank Field. Mood music said one thing, policy said another.

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

Political parties love anyone they can hold up as an intellectual

aethelfleda.bsky.social•15 days ago

The scales have certainly fallen from my eyes since they've been in power.

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

...which included removing unemployment benefits from the under-25s after 6 months and the adoption of Treasury driven social policy dictated by spending limits. So no more universal safety nets, no more welfare according to demand not cost...

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

....(the NHS had already been cash-limited under Labour in 1976).

The '98 Green Paper said "The Govt's aim is to rebuild the welfare state around work" and it contained proposals to cut incapacity benefit, distinguishing between "genuine" and "non-genuine" claimants...

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

...and in so doing levelled the charge of "welfare dependency" at not just the unemployed (which had been the previous Tory governments' focus) but also those on incapacity benefits. It also focussed heavily on benefits cheats and welfare fraud...

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

...the then Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Wigley described the Green Paper as "confirming many of the worst fears of disabled people". Left wing Labour backbenchers also were heavily critical, but to no avail the bill was passed...

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

...marking a watershed moment in UK social policy that effectively saw the end of the safety net principle in our welfare state. Under a Labour government. Could it sound more familiar?...

captainlibatron.bsky.social•15 days ago

....and yet people are still gasping that benefit cuts are happening under a *Labour* govt now because *Labour* isn't supposed to do that, even though this is a carbon copy of what happened last time they were elected, right down to the handful of left wingers, cordoned off on the back benches...

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