Chris

It’s more accurate to say that one of the key strategies of the New Labour project was to create a client state in which large numbers of middle class voters were also direct recipients of handouts. The tax credit system, for example, was designed to deposit a small amount of money in the bank accounts of even reasonably well off families. It acted like a mini party political broadcast that appeared on millions of bank statements every month. It has proven extraordinarily difficult to unpick as well, because Gordon Brown located the tax credit system in HMRC, not the benefits agency, which is part of the reason Universal Credit has been such a pig to roll out. Add to that non means tested winter fuel payments and free TV licences and you find Labour really did have almost everybody on one benefit or another by the time it was booted out in 2010.

It remains to be seen what Labour plans to do with UC - it’s hard to see how they can be true to the many criticisms levelled at it, and things like the two child policy in the tax credit and child benefit systems, unless they’re planning to just halt and reverse the reforms. If they do that, then we will indeed end up with a situation where very large numbers of people are receiving benefits of one kind or another.