We built a cruel system to fight an imaginary enemy
Few governments get the opportunity to lift half a million children out of poverty. When they do, you’d imagine it would be accompanied by an uncharacteristic level of cheer and fanfare. Instead, when the chancellor announced the removal of the two-child limit, the airwaves filled with warnings that we were taxing working people to pay for the unemployed and admonishments that if people cannot afford to have children the state should not subsidise them.
We are stuck in the political logic of the 2010s. We cannot discuss benefits without summoning the figure of the workshy. Even when a single move would lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, critics cannot let go of the worry that someone, somewhere, not currently working might benefit. We have developed a national obsession with social security – one that grew to toxic levels over a decade ago when the 2010 austerity government went hard on reforms. Those reforms – from more work searching requirements to the two-child limit – required a moral justification beyond the immediate need to save money.
So, the story was written. Those claiming support were painted as poor by choice, lazy, feckless, living off the state while buying expensive trainers. This prompted a sense of unfairness. Cutting support was no longer framed as mere cost saving, but as a moral correction.
We built an image of the UK overrun with people who preferred navigating the maze of DWP admin to getting a job. TV shows like Benefits Street fed the idea, parading a handful of households as if they represented a hidden national truth. We convinced ourselves that this was what claimants looked like.
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The story we’ve been sold about Britain’s ‘idle masses’ was always a political fiction. We spent so long chasing the workshy that we never stopped to consider that they might barely exist at all. The UK has one of the most active workforces in the OECD, with inactivity and unemployment rates near the bottom. Unemployment is lower than Germany’s and workforce participation higher than Switzerland’s. This should be celebrated.
The reality is that most people who need benefits are juggling jobs, care, sickness or sudden shocks. They need a functioning safety net that recognises that life is volatile and that risk is shared. In the UK, a growing share of children in poverty now live in households where at least one parent works. Most people on benefits are working. Many of us not receiving benefits are only a moment away from needing help from the state, often because unpredictable hours or sudden illness make life precarious.
Look at what happens when the safety net is properly built instead of sniped at to suit political agendas. In other countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway, near-universal, heavily subsidised early childhood care keeps child poverty among the lowest in Europe. Because childcare is affordable and accessible, parents don’t have to choose between work and bringing up children. The result is a more modern social security model that boosts employment, supports children’s development and reduces dependence, rather than perpetuate it.
Instead of looking to our Nordic neighbours, we spent the 2010s tearing up the system to chase a caricature: the lazy scrounger that existed mostly in tabloid imagination. By hunting that phantom, we ended up tightening the screws on everyone else.
The two-child-limit is a perfect example of this. It claimed to target feckless parents gaming the system, yet the people it hit were nothing of the sort. Most were working families trying to keep their heads above water. Larger families needed more support, not less, but the policy flipped that logic on its head and cut help precisely where costs were highest. It punished children for a story that was never true, turning a made-up villain into a very real hardship for hundreds of thousands. Child poverty has risen by over a million since these reforms were introduced (from 2.3 millionto 3.3 million) following a decade where it had been falling.
This government’s decision to remove the limit was commendable, but now it must win the war of detoxifying the welfare state itself. It’s the same chance we had in 2010 to redraw the story – a practical argument about what works. Ending the benefits culture war means refusing to fight on the old terrain. It means dropping the ritual suspicion and making the case that a decent safety net is not indulgent but essential for a stable society. If this government tries to appease the old myths, it will end up repeating them. If it challenges them, openly and without apology, it can shift the public view of social security from scroungers to stability, from blame to resilience.
To do that, this government needs a new story. A stable system that lifts children out of poverty pays for itself in health, skills and community strength. A system that terrorises claimants simply burns money later in crises, sanctions and emergency support. Ending the culture war means treating benefits as a tool for mobility, not a stick to beat a handful of imagined shirkers. If this government roots its case in that truth, it can build a consensus that outlasts headlines and outlives old myths.
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