The British public share Rowan Williams' concern that "we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted". 55% supported his statement with just 15% opposed.
An overwhelming majority of the British public share Rowan Williams’ concern that “we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”.
New polling from Populus, which the Times chose not to report today, reveals that 55% of the public agree with the statement that, “The Government is undertaking big reforms to the economy, health and education which it didn’t tell you about during the General Election campaign last year”. Just 15% disagree – a margin of close to 4-to-1.
In an op ed for the New Statesman last week, Rowan Williams wrote:
“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.
Not many people want government by plebiscite, certainly. But, for example, the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates. The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury may not, however, have been the best deliverer of the sentiment since the poll showed that 47% felt it was not his job to “criticise Government policies, whether some people share those criticisms or not”. But the poll reinforces the Observer’s leader article which argued that Williams’ intervention offered a “lesson in Opposition for Mr Miliband“.
The Populus poll also sought to get to the bottom of public opinion on the Conservative party’s welfare reforms. Williams wrote about “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving” poor'” and the “the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system”.
Iain Duncan Smith claimed in an interview with Newsnight that he had “never used the language of the deserving or undeserving poor”. Not everyone’s convinced of the veracity of this claim and IDS’ colleague George Osborne has certainly compared hard woking families with those making a “lifestyle choice” to live on benefits. The truth, of course, is that benefit fraud costs just £1 billion while the Coalition are determined to slash £18 billion from the welfare budget. But the poll, unfortunately, avoided the opportunity to drill down into the emotive topic and instead used a leading question to ask whether the Government was “right to want target undeserving benefit recipients and to take payments away from those who abuse or cheat the system”. Unsurprisingly 80% agreed.
54 Responses to “Public overwhelmingly backs Archbishop’s attack of Government policy”
Leon Wolfson
It’s not a “no-brainer” of any sort. Additional resources thrown at it have not brought down the actual, low, rate, increasing spending on it at this time is quite literally throwing money away. Especially when it’s diverted from the revenue-generating business of moving against tax avoidance and evasion!
Moreover, there is over four times as much wasted in inefficiency and poor decision making by the system, which is also something which is easier and more profitable to address.
As it is, minor mistakes /are/ harshly punished, and those punishments are going up and up. The Tories, if you hadn’t noticed, plan to fine tens of thousands of claimants (who often have no money) £50-300 a time for errors in long, complex forms. As a revenue-generating exercise, which is going to leave many people quite literally hungry!
I’m dyslexic, and you can be sure I’ll be asking for aid to fill in ANY form after the change, in case someone makes a mistake reading my bad handwriting (which, no, isn’t an issue in any of the jobs I work in, my typing is entirely acceptable)
I’ve once had to “pay back” (subtracted from the next week’s) £2.50 in housing benefit once because the *council* had a processing delay. That kind of thing will also, as I’m reading it, attract fines under “Universal Credit”.
I’d be receptive to the argument that *serious* benefit fraud (I certainly don’t mean the common sub-£100 cases where a minor mistake was made by someone!) should be more harshly punished, but that’s a different issue, no?
Bob Bailey
Rowan Williams is a complete waste of space and his leadership ability is crap to say the least. He is selling the C of E out by bending over backwards to Marxists and Islamic fascists. His churches are empty and are often sold on to become mosques or Islamic learning centers. His clergy is been regularily beaten in the East End and does he stick up for them does he ****. The majority of British Christians are embarrassed to admit they are C of E and even Bliar was so impressed he became a Catholic. To say the Tories are foisting policies on us which are radical is a laugh. They are soft as feta cheese. Labour turned this country upside down by selling its soul to the City and Bankers and flooding the country with third world immigrants and Islamic nut jobs. Coming from a working class background I would like to spit in the face of most of its treasonous and thieving MPs including the foreign Millibands. Tories are the ugly twin sister of Labour and their relationship is cosy to say the least. Disgusted with political class in Londonistan.
James Lock
"47% felt it was not his job to “criticise Government policies" – Of course it is his job. #RowanGate http://bit.ly/mD0Yk8
Dave Citizen
Bob – I dread to think what kind of a place I’d be living in if everyone had your attitude to people with different beliefs, backgrounds, ….faces(?)
On chasing benefit fraud i think it is a “no-brainer” of one sort – culturally. I think it’s a crucial component of British culture that cheats don’t prosper. Even if it costs us a few quid to stop them, its still cheap in terms of what really matters. If I understood Ed Milliband’s speech correctly, I think he was making a similar point too. He said “We cannot lecture people on benefits about responsibility if we do not also address the problem at the top in the public and private sectors”.
mr. Sensible
I think the Bishop has the right to speak, and he was entirely right in what he says.