Rarely has Ed Miliband sounded as outraged at the government as he did at today’s PMQs. Challenging David Cameron on the coalition’s welfare cuts, he declared: “They look after their friends, the people on their Christmas card list and, meanwhile, they hit people they don’t meet and whose lives they will never understand.” He turned George Osborne’s rhetoric on its head by declaring that the Chancellor’s cleaner would lose out “while his curtains are still drawn and he’s still in bed.” Despite the political risks (the majority of voters support the benefit cuts), this is a battle that Miliband has decided he must fight.
Cameron didn’t deny that the 1 per cent cap on benefit increases would fall most heavily on working households (“everyone who is on tax credits will be affected by those changes,” he said), rather he argued that the cap was necessary to reduce the welfare bill and pointed out that families would benefit from the large increase in the personal allowance. “This is the party for people who work, his is the party for unlimited welfare,” he declared. In response, Miliband highlighted research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that the average one earner couple will be £534 a year worse off by 2015, a point Cameron was unable to rebut.
But it was the personal, not the policy clashes, that were most memorable. After Cameron described Ed Balls as a bully who can “dish it out but can’t take it”, Miliband replied: “I’ve heard it all when the boy from the Bullingdon Club lectures people on bullying. Have you wrecked a restaurant recently?”
The Tories remain confident that voters will support their tough stance on the deficit and welfare, rather than Labour’s. Conversely, Labour believes that the government has badly miscalculated by hitting the very “strivers” it claims to support. The outcome of the next election will likely rest on which is right.
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