SNP should learn from Chancellor's embrace of his 'moral duty' to cut benefits
Pretending to tackle poverty by increasing benefits is taking the easy way out and is ultimately unsustainable
In his speech to the Labour conference, Chancellor John Healey warned against allowing the benefits bill to continue to grow as part of a system that “offers an income but doesn’t offer a future”. It’s a message that his own party’s left-wingers and the SNP Cabinet should heed.
“The best thing we can offer a young person isn’t a benefit payment, it’s a first job with training and a wage,” Healey added, saying reforming the welfare system was “more than just an economic must”, it was “a moral duty”.
It should be obvious that the mental health crisis affecting the young generation is connected to the fact that nearly a million of them are not in education, employment, or training, while many others are in low-paid, supposedly temporary jobs.
A productive, fulfilling life
There may be some people who find happiness in a life on benefits but, for the vast majority, that is a boring, monotonous and ultimately soul-destroying existence characterised by an absence of hope.
Most of us want to live a productive, fulfilling life. Ensuring as many people as possible have the chance to do that should be an over-riding ambition for any politician.
Pretending to tackle poverty by increasing benefits is taking the easy way out and, in the long run, is simply unsustainable. It is far harder to find ways to grow the economy, but this represents the only true path to greater national prosperity.
A serious politician for serious times?
In this task, government must not over-estimate its power as left-wing governments sometimes do. Ministers need to focus on creating the right conditions for private businesses to thrive.
Healey’s promises to maintain “fiscal discipline” and give “families and businesses a bit of breathing space” in the Budget next month were the latest encouraging signs that he is a serious politician for serious times, although we wait to see if this rhetoric will be turned into a reality that the markets, and the rest of us, can believe in.
A government can only be considered truly moral if it prefers substance over soundbites, hard choices to virtue signalling, and a future full of hope for its people over lives wasted on the dole.
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