The strivers vs scroungers battleground

Welfare will be one of the key battlegrounds at the next general election, and George Osborne’s Welfare Uprating Bill will certainly be one way the Conservative party can prod Labour on what is a hugely awkward policy issue for the party. It accelerates the internal debate about how Labour can appeal to the electorate on the issue of welfare while staying true to its own core beliefs, and, Tory strategists hope, will cause some ructions.

While the party appeared united in Manchester at its autumn conference in September, it faces hard times ahead as it tries to answer some of the big questions about what a Labour welfare state would look like. Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, is more switched on to this than some in his party, and this doesn’t always make him particularly popular with colleagues or the grassroots members. Today in the Commons, though, he attacked the uprating decision, calling it a ‘strivers tax’.