Benefits

All it took was one video from a 23-year-old YouTuber named Nick Shirley to end the 20-year political run of Minnesota’s Tim Walz. Shirley brought his camera to Minneapolis in search of childcare center fraud in a video seen by over a 100 million viewers worldwide – and appeared to find plenty.But, if you thought (or had hoped) that you’ve heard the last from the multi-billion-dollar Minnesota welfare fraud scandals, think again – the issue will remain in the national spotlight throughout 2026. The most prominent date is November 3 – Election Day. Gov. Walz himself, the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, will not be on the ballot, as he withdrew his bid on Monday morning.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have gone into bunker mode. The pair – whose political fortunes are so tightly bound – have been forced all week to defend the Chancellor’s claims at last week’s Budget that there is a black hole in the country’s finances. Mendacity soon gave way to something closer to bewilderment. Neither can grasp why they are being called out for their omissions and dishonest briefings – always more fiction than fiscal – about the state of the economy. Their new argument is this: once you factor in the Budget’s own measures – welfare increases, the U-turn on winter fuel payments and the desire to increase headroom – a hole did indeed appear. They insist they had no choice.

Westminster council has announced that every single social housing tenant in the borough will receive lifetime tenancies. No test of need. No review of income. No incentive to move on. Once you’ve been awarded a property, you can stay as long as you like. When you die, your adult children may be eligible to inherit the lifetime tenancy too. Social housing tenants in Westminster pay around a fifth of what renters on the open market spend. They also have access to more than one in four properties in the borough, from flats in postwar estates to £1 million terraced houses. The council says it’s bringing stability to people’s lives but for many young professionals dreaming of their own home, it looks like something else: a bribe.

Labour MPs these days are experiencing whiplash. When in opposition, the party attacked the Tories’ proposed benefits cuts for ‘effectively turning on the poorest in our society’. Now, Keir Starmer plans to drive through £6 billion in welfare cuts of his own. Labour ministers previously spent much of their time scolding the government for showing insufficient respect towards civil servants. Now, Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has launched a crackdown on poor performers. Since the start of Starmer’s premiership, ministers have announced 27 new quangos – yet this week the Prime Minister scrapped one in a signal of intent, telling his cabinet they cannot do what the Tories did and hide behind regulators to avoid hard decisions.

It is always upsetting to watch a woman enmired in distress and so I thought I might ride on my trusty charger to the assistance of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, with a few suggestions as to where she might make spending cuts. Rachel needs these cuts because she can’t raise taxes and the British economy is lying flat on its back in an alleyway with wee dribbling down its leg. Growth is what we need, plus some serious savings to the Exchequer. Clearly, most civil servants should be sacked – bringing a bounteous gift to the nation’s coffers My first suggestion would be to cut the rate of benefits by 25 per cent across the board.

Now that I’m no longer editor of this magazine, I can admit that I spent the election night of 1997 cheering on Tony Blair. Reader, it gets worse. I didn’t particularly want a Labour government but I badly wanted the devolution they had promised. A parliament in Edinburgh would, I thought, consider why the East End of Glasgow – home to many of my extended family – had some of the worst deprivation in Europe. Drugs deaths, unemployment, crime, all ignored by Westminster, would surely be remedied by the new politicians in Holyrood. There are lots of organisations to help people sign on, but those who want to get back to work are on their own How naive that was. Scotland’s drug-death toll has since risen fivefold and the welfare situation has worsened.

Today we are witnessing a significant failure of the UK state. This morning, the personal finance campaigner Martin Lewis reported that around 30 per cent of families had not received their latest child benefit payment. HMRC, which administers the payments, said it was ‘working to resolve the issue’ and advising claimants to ‘continue to check your bank account throughout the day’. This evening, HMRC said that 500,000 claimants had been affected. Child Benefit is worth £24 per week for the eldest child and £15.90 for every child thereafter. These sums will seem trivial to those with means but to poor and low-paid families they are a financial lifeline.

Is Rishi Sunak a low tax chancellor? He certainly likes to tell anyone who will listen that he is. Yet his actions tend to suggest the opposite. The tax burden is currently on track to reach its highest level since the early 1950s, and while Sunak unveiled one big tax slash in the Budget in the universal credit taper rate cut, the main thrust of Sunak's announcements was spend, spend, spend. Tonight Sunak addressed Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee. After announcing £150 billion in extra public spending, Sunak sought to convince his party that, despite this, he was committed to lowering taxes.