‘Never glad confident morning again!’ These words from Browning are ones that haunt prime ministers when they get to that point in their premiership when things stop going right, when their authority disappears.
When Labour MPs, we’ve just had Emma Lewelll, say it was a day of shame for the Labour Party, a day of shame for her own party.
How much harsher could she be on the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer?
There’s been wrangling and soul searching. The Government got its bill passed. The ayes have it, and they’re unlocked. But 49 Labour MPs voted against.
Jacob Rees-Mogg delivers his verdict on Labour’s welfare bill
GB News
It wasn’t easy and one Labour MP said there was nothing left in the bill to vote against.
How extraordinary, just one year after an historic election victory and the process has demonstrated one of the fundamentals of Government, that if you stop giving people money that they’re already getting, it is much harder than if you stop them getting it in the first place.
Failing to realise this made it a muddle to start with, and now the savings from reforming welfare will be minimal, even though welfare needs reform, and this is why I try not to take too much pleasure from the Prime Minister’s travails over this issue, as it is fundamentally important.
The welfare bill is out of control, it’s unaffordable. Any responsible government would have no choice but to take steps to try to establish some fiscal discipline, unless our country quite literally runs out of money.
As the brilliant Fraser Nelson observed, two tweaks to the PIP assessments have made the cost of it explode.
First, the scrapping of face-to-face interviews, replacing them with impersonal telephone interviews.
Instead, that’s led to approval rates for PIP surging to 80 per cent, double the 2010 level, assuming that people aren’t doubly ill since 2010.
Maybe the removal of face-to-face interviews has made it easier for those who want to game the system.
Secondly, there’s an £80 bonus payment for the assessors if they deal with a number of claims.
That, of course, gives them motivation to approve everybody, because that’s much quicker than not approving people.
So, financial incentive to give people a supplement to their income. And we need to understand how perilous the nation’s finances are.
Debt to GDP is nearly 100 per cent, the deficit isn’t under control. Pension obligations are enormous and growing.
We have to reduce public spending, otherwise a bond market crisis and potential inflation await us.
The Government no longer has the authority or the ability to do this, the Prime Minister has been made to look as the puppet of the parliamentary Labour Party, rather than its commander. He was elected to lead, and instead he follows.
He has suffered the biggest rebellion of his premiership, and despite his many U-turns, he seems to have even more to make now.
So can you imagine the reaction from the Labor Party, if they are presented with any serious cuts in future.
