by Peter Goddard
So David Cameron has announced his latest cuts, this time directing his bloody shears at housing benefit for the young.
Predictably, left-wing commentators have howled their outrage at this latest withdrawal of the state.
The problem, though, is that while many on the left focus on the gross abrogation of an individual’s right to benefits, criticising Cameron for cutting benefits in this way is little more than accusing a Tory of being a Tory.
The Tories are, as with most of their proposed cuts, using the opportunity to portray the recipients of housing benefit as the undeserving poor, to be contrasted with and despised by the squeezed middle.
These benefits are always shown as being paid to some feckless individual, who ultimately makes a better living on welfare than they would by honest toil.
During straitened times such as these, the rights based case for benefits will only go so far with the public.
Surely it would be better to oppose the Tories in terms of the national interest, the common good. Something in which everyone has a material, rather than moral, stake.
