As the coalition government totters from crisis to crisis and its members make increasingly disunited statements, 'Dave' has now decided to start setting out the Conservative Party's vision for the years after the next election, even though this is still some 3 years away.
Last week, we had the sight of Michael Gove being dragged to the House of Commons to explain a leak about his plans for the future of secondary education and today, apparently, Dave is going to make a speech about reforms to the welfare state. Gove's leaked plans have been seen as the beginning of his campaign to replace Dave as Tory leader so, perhaps, Dave's speech today can be seen as part of his effort to keep the job himself.
It's reported that Dave will suggest, among other things, that housing benefit for single people under the age of 25 should be reduced or stopped altogether. My reaction is to ask why it is that it's ever been paid to this group in the first place. Not very many years ago, it was the norm for young people to remain living in the family home until they left to marry and establish their own household; those who did not manage to achieve this within a reasonable time, or who simply didn't want to carry on living with ma, pa and the 6 younger brats, went into lodgings. In neither case did the state pay them anything for the cost of their housing and they were expected to make provision for their rent as a 'first call' on their earnings. If this left them with insufficient to support the lifestyle they would have liked to have had, that was just tough.
Today, children as young as 16 are often desperate to leave home and to get away from what they see as the interference of their parent(s). Older young'uns are not prepared to contemplate living in lodgings of the type their predecessors endured - small dingy rooms in old houses - and demand to be given flats or houses of their own, whether they have the wherewithal to pay for such accommodation or not. In our excessively generous welfare society, the government now falls over itself to provide what these groups want. As well as the huge financial burden this places on the state in supporting the large number of claimants who are either unemployed or whose income is deemed insufficient to pay the rent, this has resulted in a substantial increase in the requirement for accommodation, thus contributing to the supposed, but largely mythical, housing crisis.
It isn't considered de rigeur to look back at earlier years and to suggest that we might actually turn the clock back a bit, but both Gove and Dave are suggesting exactly this and why not ? For years now this country has ben living well beyond its means and the people have enjoyed lifestyles that they could not afford without the support of the state. It is high time that this nonsense was stopped and we returned to a world in which individuals are responsible for their own economic well-being; for the state to be stealing around half of the income of those who have anything, to hand it out to thousands of ne'er-do-wells is no way to run an economy or to encourage personal responsibility.
If the Tories really do mean to attack the problems of our education and welfare systems as is being indicated, they will have my vote come 2015.
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