Labour’s Housing Benefit U-Turn

Hats off to Tom Harris for pointing out the obvious: comparing the coalition’s canges to housing benefit to Balkan ethnic cleansing or Auschwitz is neither big nor clever. Points too for reminding us that the Labour manifesto this year included this passage:

Our goal is to make responsibility the cornerstone of our welfare state. Housing Benefit will be reformed to ensure that we do not subsidise people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working families could not afford.

How many “ordinary working families” (however they may be categorised) can afford to pay £25,000 in rent each year? Precious few, I submit. Granted, the coalition’s plans go further than simply placing a cap on benefits but the cap is the flagship symbol of reforms to a system that, evidently, has run amok. Now, however, it apparently amounts to urban cleansing and bringing the Highland Clearances to, I don’t know, Peckham or something.

Of course, Ed Miliband was still in government when he wrote the Labour manifesto and now he’s in opposition so all bets are off and all pledges a matter of rhetoric, not real policy.