Here’s a funny thing: Labour claims to be the ‘party of work’, but the Tories have reasonable claim to be the workers’ party, given that they’ve overseen the creation of 1.5 million new jobs. Anyway, it was one of the slogans that shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves incanted on her Sunday Politics interview this morning, when she seemed to have a pretty torrid time of it.
She had to defend her party’s leader against his cratering approval ratings and the embarrassment of a leaked election strategy document which shows that people don’t trust him on immigration, the economy or welfare. And she had to defend a policy that doesn’t seem to have been thought through: plans to withhold jobseekers’ allowance from 100,000 18 to 21 year olds unless they either have A-levels (or equivalent qualifications) or are in training.
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