https://www.ft.com/content/ee67c643-01bc-41f6-a4e2-c738deef129e
Britain is in the grip of a moral panic over welfare benefits. The preferred adjective for the costs of social security benefits to those not yet at pension age is “spiralling”, and it is used as much by Labour ministers as by the opposition. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has expressed horror at 6.5mn working-age adults receiving out-of-work benefits. “We cannot expect people to get up and go to work, and pay more and more in taxes, to subsidise millions of others not to work,” she said.
There is nothing wrong with politicians suggesting a radically less generous welfare state, but the moralising should stop. There is precious little truth in a picture of Britain as a country where hordes of shirkers collect benefits from the rest of us …