Needlessly Keeping Children in Poverty

Missing from Labour's first King's speech this week was a commitment to remove the two-child cap on child benefit. The measure was introduced in 2017 by the Tories to make life harder for (mainly) working class women, offer a frisson of pleasure to right wing editors, and cause problems for Labour. Eight years on it's still making the waters choppy for the new government, who've otherwise enjoyed a couple of weeks of political plain sailing and establishment praise.

For about 18 months now, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have trotted out the same argument. Because Liz Truss crashed the economy, Labour cannot afford to do the things it wants to do. It's worth noting that neither have directly said they'd like to scrap the two child limit, except for in an "ideal world". Yet, because of this policy, some 1.6m children are in poverty, and a million of them are without beds. Thanks to an amendment put down by the SNP, Commons opposition outside and inside the parliamentary party is cohering. And so Starmer has moved to try and buy opposition off with a taskforce, with the Number 10 poverty unit reporting to it. This is unlikely to be enough to prevent the first back bench rebellion of the new term. Not that Starmer stands a chance of being defeated, but to face opposition this early on - especially as the party rests on only a thin layer of popular support - is discomfiting.

The morality of the case of lifting the cap speaks for itself, but there's no economic case for keeping the cap either. Seeing as growth is the magical cure-all, you might have thought pushing pro-growth policies would attract Reeves's attention. After all, for a measly £1.7bn parents with larger families will have more money to spend. That's money flowing into local economies keeping businesses afloat. You know, those multiplier effects the chancellor would have learned about when her tutors covered Keynes. It also takes stress off hard-pressed parents, making them more productive and happier at work, and less likely having to access mental health support from local GPs. It means kids grow up in a less stressed environment, allowing them to get on better at school and along with their friends. That also means lightening the caseload of overstretched social service departments. The spend is repaid in medium and long-term savings to public services, which on paper conforms entirely to the iron hard fiscal framework the government are signed up to.

The Labour leadership know this. They've been lobbied by honourable members, charity bosses, policy wonks, and constituents who've all made the same points. If ignorance isn't what's stopping Starmer and Reeves doing the right thing in their own terms, what is?

As we saw during the 14 blighted years the Tories were in power, they would make counter-intuitive decisions from the standpoint of economic growth and, in the coalition years, fiscal consolidation. For example, in a previous life there were plenty of occasions where salvoes of letters were fired off to ministers complaining about how the withdrawal of X funding would displace greater costs on to Y services, or where investing in such-and-such a scheme was projected to provide profitable returns to the Treasury. It took time for me to realise that the Tories were not interested in managing British capitalism as if it was a company looking to maximise returns for its shareholders, or even a household wanting to balance its budget as per Margaret Thatcher's famous simile. Above all, they were interested in managing class relations. The austerity programme was a conscious effort by the Tories to disempower labour further by ripping away its safety net, carving up public services, forcing more people to work longer for less pay, and attack our collective economic security. The aim was to consolidate British capital and the class relations underpinning it after the unexpected implosion of global finance, and getting us to pay for their crisis. Corbynism and Brexit (via Boris Johnson's boosterism) raised expectations that the state can and should do things, and the Covid support packages demonstrated that indeed it could. But this threatened to undo the legacy of Osbornomics, and as soon as he was made Chancellor and then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has been consistent in his efforts at reducing the capacity of the state - regardless of the damage done to the social fabric of the country and the popular legitimacy of mainstream politics.

Labour are now in charge of managing British class relations, and taking their cue from the Tories have determined that "change" means as little as possible. Modernise the state and restore its authority, offer capital guaranteed markers in infrastructure and the green transition, provide jobs for Starmer's base, and if good things come of this limited prospectus it's a bonus. But Labour always has to try harder as far as the most class conscious sections of capital are concerned, because it's fundamentally unreliable thanks to the foot it has in the organised workers' movement. As the party remains a site of class struggle there's always the potential - however remote - for it to succumb to the left and go from being a pacifier of labour to a political instrument of it. Labour leaderships have to prove how on side they are with capital by being seen to turn its face against policies that are in working class interests. Such as abolishing the child benefit cap. Sticking with it has become a sign of how reliable Starmer and co will be in not buckling to the pressure of its base.

There are a couple of other reasons too. Life is much easier if political feathers are left unruffled, and reversing the Tories' policy involves political leadership. Not least because it means going against the Tory press, who still frame permitted political debate in this country. And also the tide of public opinion, which which has been heavily shaped by the relentless 45-year long war on welfare, is against it (YouGov polling suggests 60% want to keep the cap, with 50% of Labour voters supporting the status quo). The chance of the always risk averse Prime Minister taking on the media and widespread attitudes on behalf of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the country is, quite frankly, fanciful.

And then there are the attitudes of the leadership themselves. Long before she was caught ripping off other people's work, Reeves was plagiarising Tory rhetoric and demonising people on social security during her stint as work and pensions shadow. Labour were to be "tougher" than the Conservatives on benefits. But it's not like any of them have to be briefed that these are good optics. It's a reflex. With many of them coming from working class or modest petit bourgeois backgrounds, they have benefited from the social mobility they preach. They have risen out of their class by adopting middle class values. They got their heads down and worked hard for their position. So if they could do it by applying themselves, why can't others? It must be barriers to success, bad choices, or pure laziness. The contempt with which Bridget Phillipson dismisses parents who take their kids out of school to save thousands on cheaper holidays, the dismissal of the NHS staff concerns Wes Streeting now oversees, or the aspersions Reeves has cast on those who get by with welfare support says a great deal about how they see themselves. And because their attitude toard social security chimes with the country's, they can convince themselves that on this and other policies they're swimming with the tide of public opinion.

Child poverty is a blight, and a completely unnecessary one. But it can be tackled, and immediate relief can be granted by getting rid of the child benefit cap. But Labour won't do this, because Labour chooses not to.

Image Credit