Even though, as I said earlier, it makes sense for David Cameron to come out fighting in favour of his party’s welfare reforms after they were slammed by the Archbishop of Westminster, there’s a point worth considering about how useful these criticisms from leading lights both in the Catholic Church and Church of England are for the Left. Nichols has since said that the government’s cuts and reforms are ‘perfectly understandable’, but that ‘what is beyond my understanding is why a programme of reform needs to result in people who, when they are given some food, burst into tears because they haven’t eaten in three days’.
This is precisely the stance that the Left has taken on welfare reform. The Labour party supports benefit cuts (apart from the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ which it is politically expedient to oppose, not just because it is the only welfare cut that doesn’t poll spectacularly well but because the SNP have made it one of the key points in their independence campaign) in principle, and supports welfare reform in principle.
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