The issue as to the terms of the debate over the welfare bill, has raised some very interesting questions; both about the agency of the left (as manifest in the labour party) and the ideology of the conservative ‘movement). As regards the welfare state and the economic debate as a whole; the willingness of the left to surrender the ground on which the debate is held by far represents the greatest threat to the democratic left in the U.K for 50 years

The Tories may seek to alter forever the terms of this debate. That is to change the discourse to questions of how to care for the poverty stricken rather than how to create a society free from poverty. This is the vital point (in its direct relation to the lack of ideological force in the left) as once we have lost the transcendent notion that poverty itself is anathema to contemporary society, it will require a cataclysmic event to reintroduce the notion into the democratic machinery.

This is due to the peculiar functioning of modern democracy: both parties govern within an ontological band that can only be moved incrementally, no individual or party can afford to move too far beyond the dominant discourse. Indeed even if individuals do move to the extremes, this move is simply compensated for and mediated by counter views on the other extreme, the mean position will always outweigh both, constituting as it does: those of neither and both positions. In short; of any three options, it is the middle option will almost always be approved by the majority (aside from those moments such as total war, revolution or economic meltdown, that shift completely the position of the mean/majority). In this context it the governments shift to the right can be seen as truly radical, the only reason this has been possible is due to the trauma of the financial ‘crisis’. In a time of financial difficulty this administration has used apocalyptic language for a very specific purpose (see Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine for a complete explication of so called shock economics).

Nothing else matters, the sad reality at this point is the individual policies and proposals can only be effectively opposed once the parameters of the debate are shifted back to the context of a national identity that abhors poverty on an ideological level. A nation that cares for its poor not because this ensures the functioning of society but because the basic dignity of the entire society can only be maintained if a basic decent level of subsistence is guaranteed to all. The idea that any economic crisis calls for an increase in inequality is as laughable as it is dangerous.