Slimming Down

Daveybloke's Cuddly Chancellor, whose consistent air of adipose shiftiness more and more makes him resemble a pubescent Nigel Lawson before, during or after an episode of bodily self-pollution, has been busy denying rumours of a "blazing, shouting, grade-A row" with the ever-regrettable Iain Duncan Smith; though given their not altogether incompatible priorities, it is nearly as hard to imagine what Osborne and Duncan Smith may have to fight about as it is to imagine Duncan Smith doing anything that can remotely be considered blazing. Duncan Smith wants to "simplify the benefits system" or, in Standard English, take welfare benefits away from poor people; and "create incentives to work" or, in Standard English, punish the people whom his Government is going to throw out of employment for failing to find the jobs which his Government refuses to help create. George the Sebaceously Osborne, on the other hand, wants to cut the welfare bill by at least twenty-five per cent. Not that money is an object, good heavens no: "It's not a question of the cost of the reform, it's a question of the reform leading to a fundamentally fairer society where people are taken off a lifetime of benefits" whether they need them or not. Not only will this be "fundamentally progressive and a fair thing to do", it will also be "massively cheaper for our country if we can achieve it", though of course money is not an object, good heavens no. Cuts to the public sector being an end in themselves, fairness and fundamental progressivity will trickle down automatically provided the slashes are deep enough.