The cross-party consensus on welfare reform echoes the Gingrich–Clinton revolution

The Conservatives are making about as much headway in next week’s Glasgow East by-election as they would on Mars. ‘I told one guy I was from the Conservative party,’ moans one shadow Cabinet member who was campaigning there. ‘He said, “Oh, aye. Where’s that happening then?’’’ Hatred would at least entail some kind of recognition. And yet the emerging Cameroon mission is precisely to help places like this — where the party is, quite literally, beneath contempt.

The curse of Glasgow East is worklessness — not just its 6.7 per cent level of unemployment. For every unemployed person, there are seven other people on some other form of welfare dependency. Most of these have not worked for at least five years and are, statistically, more likely to die than work again. Drink problems, drug addiction, violent crime and family break-up — all stem, ultimately, from mass joblessness, a curse visited upon the area by the welfare state.