Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour’s welfare reform problem

Angela Rayner, one of the ‘rising stars’ of Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench, received rapt applause from Labour members when she spoke to the conference. It wasn’t just that she gave a passionate, warm and funny speech. It was also that she came armed with policies that the party faithful really liked, such as ending the academisation of schools and halting the free schools programme. Even though the roots of these school reforms are in New Labour, they’ve become steadily more unpopular since the Conservatives extended and modified the programmes themselves. Announcing their end as part of Labour’s National Education Service was always going to be a popular move.

In that same vein, you’d expect Margaret Greenwood’s speech earlier this afternoon on Work and Pensions policy to have received a similar response. It didn’t: the hall wasn’t packed to the rafters, but those delegates who were there could only cheer her criticisms of the Conservatives’ welfare programme (and there were many criticisms) as she was unable to produce any solid policy.

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