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Liam Byrne is right – we need 'radical reform' of the initiative-zapping, soul-destroying welfare state
...For many well-off Liberal commentators – who, notably, have no interaction with the welfare state, except in the sense that buddies of theirs probably manage huge chunks of it for a fat wage packet – the welfare state is a sacred thing and criticism of it is the equivalent of blasphemy. Yet Byrne surely has a point when he says the welfare state is in need of "radical reform" and we should seriously explore how to get "communities working again". Indeed, I would go further and say that the expansion of the welfare state into more and more areas of less well-off people's lives is one of the worst developments of recent years, seriously zapping resourcefulness and social solidarity from working-class communities.

Byrne's mistake is that he seems motivated by a narrow desire to save the state money. The financial cost of social welfare is "simply too high", he says, and we should "bring down [the] benefits bill to help pay down the national debt". That is a Scrooge's approach to the problem of the welfare state. The really terrible cost of ever-expanding welfarism is measured not in cash, but in the impact welfarism has on working communities, on those who have been made increasingly reliant upon the charity, largesse and therapeutic meddling of the massive and monolithic welfare machine. Relentless financial and therapeutic intervention by the state into poor people's lives has, not surprisingly, had a pretty devastating impact both on social interaction and individual aspiration.

When people come to be more reliant on the state than they are on each other, community bonds fray and social solidarity falls into disrepair. ...