The battles ahead
Reforming welfare is Tony Blair’s top priority. But succeeding will mean winning arguments as well as votes
THE Labour Party invented the welfare state and only the Labour Party can reform it. That has been the claim made by the Blair government ever since it took office. The idea is that, because Labour is believed to have the interests of the poor at heart, the Blair government will be able to push ahead with reforms that would have been politically impossible for the Tories. The government's aim is to cut spending on social security, and so to free up money for health and education.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The battles ahead”
From the December 20th 1997 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party