{"id":2573,"date":"2019-04-24T13:12:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T13:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2022-06-17T17:00:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T17:00:30","slug":"the-quiet-revolution-the-labour-party-and-welfare-conditionality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2573","title":{"rendered":"The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare conditionality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 2017 snap general\nelection was, for many people, a remarkable result for Labour given the\npervading conventional wisdom that the Labour party could not do well on a more\nleft?wing platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Labour manifesto\ncontained a range of more radical policies. In terms of welfare, these included\nabolishing the \u2018bedroom tax\u2019 and the removal of housing benefit for young\npeople. Significant changes were also pledged to Universal Credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most starkly, however, the 2017\nmanifesto made multiple references to \u2018end the punitive sanctions regime\u2019 for\nbenefit recipients. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not\nelaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a\nwelfare consensus spanning over twenty years. Likewise, a large scale of reform\nis proposed to disability benefits, and there are now confirmed plans to pilot\nuniversal basic income. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collectively, these policies\nwould seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system,\nwhich over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet\ndespite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it\nreceived very little media or public attention during the election campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what is Labour\u2019s \u2018quiet\nrevolution\u2019 on welfare? Is it indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion\non welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social\nattitudes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The politics of\nconditionality<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Some degree of\nconditionality has long been part of the UK social security system. The\npresent, more intensified, system can be dated to the Conservative reforms of\nthe mid?1990s, which New Labour governments enthusiastically embraced. The quid\npro quo <\/em>approach \u2013 of rights and responsibilities for both the state and\nthe claimant \u2013 was one of the defining features of New Labour’s political\nphilosophy. Under the Conservative?led governments from 2010, the number of\nwelfare sanctions issued expanded rapidly and conditionality was extended\nfurther, including to those in paid employment under the new Universal Credit\narrangements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ed Miliband’s Labour \u2013 for all\nthe media scaremongering around a shift to the left \u2013 fell squarely within\nthe rights and responsibilities<\/em> tradition of Blair and Brown.\nSo Labour’s recent policy on welfare conditionality thus represents a break\nwith a political consensus that spans a quarter of a century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, what makes Labour’s\nchallenge to conditionality all the more remarkable is that it seemingly breaks\nwith another political tradition of the past two decades: the instinct that\npoliticians must follow public opinion rather than try and reshape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding Labour’s\nwelfare strategy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There was public appetite\nfor welfare reforms in the 1990s for at least two decades. Between 1994 and\n2011, the percentage of British Social Attitudes (BSA) respondents who stated\nthat unemployment benefits were \u2018too high and discourage (unemployed people)\nfrom finding jobs\u2019 increased from 24.9 per cent to 64.1 per cent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is public opinion\ntowards welfare now changing? There are three arguments that stand out. The\nfirst is that other issues have overtaken social security and unemployment as\nissues of public concern. Figure 1<\/a><\/strong> shows how unemployment was\njudged by many to be a key issue between 2011 and 2013.  However as the labour market has improved\nsince 2013, other issues, most notably the EU and the NHS, as well as to a\nlesser extent poverty, have become much more salient in the public mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has the increased concern with issues Labour is more trusted on created the space for Labour to be bolder on welfare reform?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
IPSOS Mori Issues Index, 2007\u20132017 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Second, public attitudes\nto welfare have never been as tough, uncompromising and homogeneous as many\npoliticians and academics have thought. Geiger\nand Meuleman<\/a> <\/strong>argue that most people’s views about social security are, at\nroot, ambivalent. People tend to have both concerns about the welfare state\nwhilst simultaneously feeling that many groups, such as the in?work poor and\ndisabled people, are \u2018deserving\u2019 of welfare: this is where Labour has focused\nits rhetoric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, Labour’s new\nwelfare strategy may not be boldly opposing dominant public opinion, but is\nrather responding to changes in social attitudes. One of the most recent BSA\nreports, for example, shows that there has been a rapid fall in perceptions of\nbenefit fraud and manipulation.5<\/a><\/strong> In addition, people are\nless likely to support further cuts to social security benefits than they were\na few years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Removing conditionality?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For the reasons above,\nit is arguable that Labour is not so much confronting as following changing\npublic opinion. It is important, however, to keep public opinion on welfare in\nperspective. As Table 1<\/a><\/strong> shows, large\nnumbers of people continue to hold hostile views on benefit claimants and, in\nparticular, unemployed people. Whilst overall views on welfare may be\nsoftening, the 2012 BSA survey also demonstrates strong\nsupport for the principle of welfare conditionality<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Removing conditionality altogether, or even diluting it, would still constitute going against the grain of public opinion. There is, consequently, a fourth way of understanding Labour’s new welfare strategy. Since New Labour at least, there has been a tacit assumption that politicians should follow public opinion rather than try and reshape it. However, Labour could now be attempting to do what has long been considered on the left to be both improbable and undesirable: to transform public attitudes on welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Table 1. Attitudes to unemployment and benefits, British Social Attitudes, 2016 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In fact, perhaps\ninadvertently, New Labour itself was hugely successful in changing a pre-1997\npublic opinion on welfare that was relatively benign into one that was by the\nearly 2000s, far\nmore hostile<\/a>. More evidence for this can be found in the longer\nversion of my article.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Tom\nO’Grady shows<\/a> that in Labour party speeches, negative depictions of welfare\novertook positive depictions of welfare before<\/em> the shift in\npublic opinion occurred; New Labour did not respond to changing social\nattitudes, but actively reshaped them. It thus became terrified to confront a\nmonster of its own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transforming social attitudes to welfare might not be as risky as commonly perceived. A pilot for universal basic income, an unconditional, regular payment to all citizens, would truly test the malleability of public opinion on welfare. For a start, it would require governments to build public support for higher taxes, address the social norms around welfare provision, and engage with debates around the centrality of employment and the work ethic to many voters. When it comes to welfare, will the Labour party of today take its inspiration from New Labour? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version of this article<\/a> originally appeared in the Political Quarterly journal.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2017 snap general election was, for many people, a remarkable result for Labour given the pervading conventional wisdom that the Labour party could not do well on a more left?wing platform. The Labour manifesto contained a range of more radical policies. In terms of welfare, these included abolishing the \u2018bedroom tax\u2019 and the removal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":2576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1396,1403],"tags":[1534],"coauthors":[1609],"class_list":["post-2573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-uk","category-inequality","tag-labour"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/The-Quiet-Revolution-The-Labour-Party-and-Welfare-conditionality-alexandru-tugui-185047-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}