The man who would be Gordon’s guru

On Gordon Brown’s bookshelf stands a new title likely to stand out from the others: In Our Hands: a Plan to Replace the Welfare State. It is a detailed proposal to abolish all benefit payments, from pensions to child support, and instead make a cash payment to every adult in the country. Its author is Charles Murray, the controversial American academic who firmly believes that the Chancellor’s welfare policies are destroying the social fabric of Britain with calamitous results.

Infuriatingly for his army of critics, Murray has become too influential to be ignored. His first book, arguing that benefits were breeding rather than alleviating poverty, set the intellectual framework for America’s acclaimed welfare reform. He has met the Chancellor and was impressed by his intellect. Sitting in a barren office at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, feet on the table and gazing out of the window as he talks, Murray wonders why someone as clever as Brown cannot see the damage wreaked on the poor by his own policies.

‘Here’s what I don’t understand. Gordon Brown is very well-read, including books he doesn’t agree with. He will have noticed things are getting worse. Things have not just failed to improve as welfare has increased; civil society in lower-income Britain is going off a cliff. So why doesn’t he ask whether there could possibly be a relationship between the welfare efforts he is making, and the deterioration observed?’

This is the point of Murray’s book — which is not widely available in Britain but is being passed around Westminster like a banned copy of Spycatcher. Welfare, Murray contends, is tearing apart the bonds that once tied low-paid neighbourhoods together. As people looked to the state for support, rather than to each other, their behaviour changed. Young men chose welfare dependency instead of work, and unmarried women had babies.