Return of the nasty party?

David Cameron is at his best when circumstances force him to be bold, or so the thinking goes. With his government floundering and the wounded media baying for blood, the prime minister has counter-attacked with radical welfare reform plans. Yesterday heard rumours of reduced rent subsidies for the under-25s. Today comes news of proposed cuts to jobless families’ benefits: specifically, the withdrawal of dole payments after 2 years, lowering the housing benefit cap, and stopping income support and additional child benefit if a couple have more than three children.

Those with a sense of irony will recall the outrage over Lord Flight’s view that the welfare system encourages the very poorest to ‘breed’. Does David Cameron still disagree with Flight’s analysis or merely with his terms? Cameron, the compassionate conservative, is alive to the risk he is taking, and his language is cautious in consequence. The Mail reports that he will say:

‘Quite simply, we have been encouraging working-age people to have children and not work, when we should be enabling working-age people to work and have children.