The British Tories have long revelled in luridly painting Labour, under leader Ed Miliband and before, as Old Labour, the party of welfare, irredeemably committed to featherbedding dole scroungers. Whatever the truth, the myth plays well in more that middle England – polls suggest Labour's defence of welfare against cuts enjoys barely the support of a fifth of the population much of the time. And two recent YouGov polls show the Tories leading Labour by four points on handling the economy, and large majorities believing Miliband not up to the PM's job.
Now, ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's looming election-focussed spending review, Labour has decided to gets its retaliation in first and out-austerity the Tories. On Monday last Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls promised the party would not restore universal child benefit, and on Thursday Miliband gave a very Tory-sounding commitment to cap total structural social security spending over three years.
Miliband’s advisers say the speech was about changing the debate on welfare from “more versus less” to “better and different”. It’s a discourse that mirrors Labour’s response to the “tax and spend party” tag, and its emphasis on attacking the competence of the government rather than its ideology.
But as it tries to shift the ground of the debate Labour is also in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Ed Balls’ commitments not to restore universal child benefit and to means test winter fuel allowance are not just about showing fiscal responsibility, but, more profoundly, a repudiation of a core Labour commitment to universalism in benfits and services.
Miliband has tried to present his approach as more nuanced. He has spoken of cutting or capping housing benefit and transfering housing spending to subsidise social house building, and also of taking on low-paying employers. The danger is, however, that he will persuade voters, that yes he is not Old Labour, but instead of New Labour, New Tory.