[Andy McDandy]

A visit from the PM brings with it the media. An employee cussing him doesn't do much for the organisation's image. Bringing the firm into disrepute, HR normally call it.

[kreuzberger]

I feel a certain affinity with Starmer. On the maternal side, my grandfather was a tool-maker, as was a son of his who became CFO at an A-list British business. Serious stuff and a few quid were made along the way. Of course, there were a few genetically questionable weirdos on the family hard shoulder who voted Tory and engaged in abuse, but they are few and far between.

My father's side was infantry and staunch Labour. OK, my father, himself, lurched off to the racist right in his later years, but there was also a burning ethos of working class solidarity and a societal duty to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those less fortunate than those who could knock in a decent shift.

As Starmer doubles down on the most vulnerable in society, I am left questioning my own judgement. I assumed that he would have red-lines.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The whole package sounds like it's split into very contrasting treatment for health benefits and out of work benefits. Not that any benefit is generous but the out of work benefits will be increased above inflation. Costs are recouped from restricting PIP. Though the numbers on PIP have gone up a lot, it's not going to be feasible to save £5bn a year from this group. Barely anyone will notice the out of work benefits going up anyway, so you'll get no credit for that. Better not to increase that at all, and to cut less from the PIP.

Better still, don't do anything now. Forget all the "Reeves Headroom" stuff until the year end.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good point made by the IFS here.

The other major saving – from tightening PIP eligibility criteria – is by comparison relatively uncertain. The impact of reforms to assessment criteria is more difficult to predict than the effect of changes in amounts paid, as the way claimants approach the assessment is likely to change in response. Previous governments attempting similar reforms have found that they have saved much less than hoped.

So people who on the face of it will lose PIP might end up keeping it. Government gets all the stick for cruelty (rightly) and ends up paying anyway. I think this ought to have been left well alone. However "brave" they think they are.

[The Weeping Angel]

The whole package sounds like it's split into very contrasting treatment for health benefits and out of work benefits. Not that any benefit is generous but the out of work benefits will be increased above inflation. Costs are recouped from restricting PIP. Though the numbers on PIP have gone up a lot, it's not going to be feasible to save £5bn a year from this group. Barely anyone will notice the out of work benefits going up anyway, so you'll get no credit for that. Better not to increase that at all, and to cut less from the PIP.

Better still, don't do anything now. Forget all the "Reeves Headroom" stuff until the year end.

They're some decent ideas in the package but the stuff about PIP has overshadowed that.

[kreuzberger]

Quick question; are the structures in the Number 10 operation so rigidly hierarchal that no one can say to the boss, "are you so fucking mental with this welfare shit that you could cack your majority out or your naval?"

This is getting to the watching-the-car-crash-through-the-fingers stage and it is all as predictable as it is unnecessary.

[Crabcakes]

This does seem like the thing we all knew was going to happen could have very easily been done before any of this damaging process of affirmation there would be no change and then concessions and affirmation it would go ahead on the chosen date and the further concessions and it not going ahead on the chosen date was thrashed out in public.

I am not convinced that, on domestic policy at least, Starmer is being at all well advised.

[kreuzberger]

Those of us who were hard-wired to the Brexit debates and watched Starmer at a molecular level were mighty impressed by the man. Clever, cunning, courteous, and likeable. To one degree or another, those positive observations were shared widely enough to buy him a stonking majority.

Less committed voters must be thinking that the emperor is stark-bollock naked. Those of us who struggle with the necessary physics for such a 180° are probably wondering whether he has been forgetting his trousers, every now and then.

Agreed, therefore, that McSweeney and his runners should be on the next boat out of Downing Street.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They're some decent ideas in the package but the stuff about PIP has overshadowed that.

There's also a genuine issue. I think it's reasonably clear that lots of people who weren't expected to get PIP and haven't in the past are now getting it, and the awards can be very large, unlike sick benefit or whatever that's called now. The IFS:

The rapid growth in health-related benefits seems to be largely a UK phenomenon. The number of claimants of similar benefits in most similar countries with available data (Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US) has in fact slightly fallen over the same period. There have been small percentage increases in claims in France and Norway. Denmark was the only other country with available data that saw a significant increase and, at 13%, even that was considerably smaller than the increase in health-related benefit claimants in the UK (where claimants for disability benefits have increased by more than 30%).

But it's clear from the work of people like Chaminda Jayanetti that people will lose it under the current plans who everyone would agree absolutely shouldn't be losing it. That's what happens when you try to do something too quickly, with an eye on opening up fiscal space with OBR predictions. The Blair Government was gradualist, and the better for it. There wasn't the same sort of imperative to balance numbers on a (hypothetical) page.