When Rachel Reeves pledged last week that a third runway at Heathrow would put money in the pockets of “working people”, the chancellor gave a bigger hint about the government’s plans than the headlines suggested. The phrase didn’t just claim that the economic benefit of big-money infrastructure projects would somehow trickle down to workers struggling to pay the rent. It implied that anyone who didn’t do their duty for the labour market – say, people too disabled or ill to work, family carers and jobseekers – should expect very little from Labour.
Such sentiments could be dismissed as empty rhetoric, of course, but by all accounts are actually a preview. In the autumn budget, Reeves committed to keeping the £3bn of disability benefit “savings” the outgoing Conservative government planned. It is now expected that a package of spending cuts will be finalised in the next fortnight, in what the Times describes as a “radical overhaul of welfare” that could see hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill people lose their benefits.
