Want to make welfare a 'moral mission'? Stop toting it as a weapon.

Quite naturally, a piece from the Prime Minister claiming that welfare reform is ‘at the heart… of our social and moral mission in politics’ is provoking hilarity from those who’ve never backed that moral mission in the first place. David Cameron is writing in the Telegraph as a response to the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols’ comments in the same paper at the weekend that the government’s welfare reforms were a ‘disgrace’. He argues:

‘Of course, we are in the middle of a long and difficult journey turning our country around. That means difficult decisions to get our deficit down, making sure that the debts of this generation are not our children’s to inherit. But our welfare reforms go beyond that alone: they are about giving new purpose, new opportunity, new hope – and yes, new responsibility to people who had previously been written off with no chance.

‘Seeing these reforms through is at the heart of our long-term economic plan – and it is at the heart, too, of our social and moral mission in politics today.’