Labour Oppose 1% Cap On Benefits!

Tory front Bench After Delivering Grim Autumn Statement
Which Will Affect Hundreds of Thousands of Poor,
vulnerable and middle income earners

Yesterday in the House of Commons the glee on the Tory benches when Shadow chancellor, Ed Balls announced that Labour will be opposing the 1% cap on benefits, confirms once again, (if it needed confirming after last week's disgraceful display in the House after Osborne's Autumn Statement) that the Conservative party really have become a sick joke.

The fact that the Tory and Liberal Democrat front bench see the Labour opposition's intention to stand up for the poor, vulnerable, disabled and low waged as a "weakness" explains a lot about the type of people Cameron, Osborne, Alexander and Duncan Smith are.

In what could prove to be a significant move and a turning point for the Labour opposition, Labour are attempting to draw clear boundaries between the three parties. The Tory controlled coalition government's policy to cut the benefit of 60% of low income wage earners and the unemployed etc, is something that the Labour opposition obviously feels they cannot support, for Labour, doing the right thing, for the right reasons is far more important, even though it may harm their support in the country. If opinion polls are to be believed the public want welfare spending cut, however, I believe that David Cameron and George Osborne and their immigrant hating, welfare loathing right wing advisers have totally misjudged the public, they have made the politically fatal mistake of believing their own spin and have fallen for their very own hype. This is the danger of governing in this media obsessed way, the Tories have forgotten that right wing newspaper tycoons and editors no longer have the influence they once had and the public are far more savvy than they realise.

The government believe they have backed Labour into a corner, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were they. Ed Miliband has gone out on a limb over bankers, Leveson etc and been proven to be in line with public thinking. Today we have the release of the unemployment figures, we are asked to believe that unemployment fell by 82,000. This figure is a totally misleading figure:

• August and September figures have already been counted, so that just leaves October
• So again we have double presenting of the Olympic effect in these figures
• Overall employment figures include 200,000 public sector worker jobs being reclassified as private sector jobs.
• Up to 500,000 people who are being forced to work for nothing on government work schemes and courses etc are being taken OFF the unemployment register (ONS)
• Part-time jobs have risen sharply as employers take on two part-time workers because the government have made it cheaper for them to do this through employer national insurance contributions, rather than employ one full-time worker.
• Manufacturing output fell sharply.
• Construction fell by 2.4% last quarter and by 10.8% over last 2 years. Manufacturing and construction are our two main industries for proper full-time jobs.
• Subsidiary companies that depend upon manufacturing and construction are not hiring or making jobs
• So where are all these private sector jobs being created - exactly?
• We have millions UNDEREMPLOYED like subbie builders waiting for the phone to ring, who are NOT registered as unemployed.

The public are not stupid many people are reporting that they go for jobs but full-time proper positions are becoming fewer in number and harder to get. Underemployment is the real picture, but the government, far from acknowledging it and doing something about it, they are actively encouraging it as it helps them in their deception and misleading of the public.

We have travelled from secure full-time employment to a position where most jobs today are precarious and people are employed in low paid part-time positions with unstable hours and no contracts and it is these very people that the government are now attacking and it is these people that the Labour party are trying to defend.


Now that Labour have drawn the boundaries, where does this leave Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrat party? Do they support the Tories and risk alienating still further many of their supporters who have just about clung on during this past 2½ years, or do they side with the Labour party? If the Liberal Democrats back this move, I believe their remaining support will erode, how could left leaning supporters support an attack on 60% of low wage part-time workers?
How do the Liberal Democrat leaders explain away underemployment? Most people living in poverty today are actually in work, so how can the Lib Dems support an all out assault on them?

It's not the Labour party that have been pushed into this position, it is the Liberal Democrats and by the party they are supporting to actually do it.

From April 2013, many low paid workers will have their housing benefit capped, they will also lose tax credits if they cannot force their employer to give them more hours, For many of these people the sudden change in their circumstances will force them under and they will be evicted from their homes for non-payment of rent.

Does Cameron honestly believe that when the public start seeing and reading about families being evicted from their homes and their children taken into care because their parents can no longer afford to keep them or pay their rent, that people are going to back his outrageous attack on the poor and most vulnerable in society? What Cameron and Osborne are doing is bullying people they feel cannot fight back and who they think have no voice and will not speak up to defend themselves. In an act of despicable cowardice they are using people they deem are weak as tools to get other people to vote for them. They are trying to turn working people against working people, just like they have caused a rift between private sector workers and public sector workers.

I believe Cameron and Osborne have seriously misjudged the mood of the majority of the general public. The Labour party are opposing the government's unfair bill on  the grounds that it is unfair not only to those that exist on benefits, but to the 60% who work for a living in low paid jobs. They are opposing it not because they think it will win them votes (because the polls say otherwise), they are opposing it because  they believe that this is the right thing to do by people.

Since the Tory controlled coalition government assumed power, the use of food banks has soared to  FOUR times the number it was 2 years ago and now over a quarter million starving Britons will have used emergency food banks by the end of this year. It's a shocking indictment on the sixth richest country in the world, that we have a government that are purposefully forcing people into poverty in order to score cheap political points.

Will Nick Clegg keep in power the party that is now causing a class war and attacking the poor in order to pay for the rich tax cuts? Over £170,000 each? The ball is in his court, not the Labour party's.

And remember this is the government that find all this highly amusing!