‘Declaring warfare on welfare whereas splashing billions on a wealthfare privileged elite is immoral’
Wealthfare handouts for the richest paid for by welfare cuts for the poorest reinforce Kemi Badenoch as an old school Two Nation Tory.
She hasn’t changed, they haven’t changed, when the Conservative Party and its leader are for the wealthiest few while kicking the young and struggling in the benefits.
Even the Sheriff of Nottingham might’ve proved squeamish over her robbing the poor to pay for the rich.
Nothing yells “something for nothing culture” louder than reinforcing inherited wealth, gifting bigger fortunes to winners of a parental lottery who never earned fat jackpots Badenoch will clobber folk to subsidise.
And what’s really “immoral” is declaring war on welfare while splashing billions extra on a wealthfare privileged elite. Same old Conservatives looking after millionaires and down on the millions so it’s no wonder most Britons think they haven’t fundamentally changed since 2024’s calamitous rejection at the end of 14 grey years.
Polls suggest the Tories are extremely unlikely to form a UK Government any time soon and it’s worth recalling George Osborne in 2007 promised to raise tax-free inheritance to £1m then never did during six years he was Chancellor or the full 14 years of Tory misrule.
Plus it’s worth stressing just one-in-20 estates currently pay inheritance tax so Badenoch exempting homes and £1million on top is an unearned present for a rich niche she and her top team probably know all by name.
Showering what may prove to be phantom bribes on easy street residents – £700million for highest earning yummy mummies, £1.4billion for private school kids, £9billion helping most the buyers of the most expensive houses and now billions extra for kids of loaded dead parents – while smearing and threatening those born the other side of the tracks deserves to backfire.
Nor is common sense common in a Tory Party discouraging the elderly to downsize, trapping the aged in houses too big unless they need to sell them to fund social care she isn’t providing but crucially Andy Burnham ’s Labour would.
The inheritance tax card is straight from a 2007 Osborne-Brown playbook credited with helping deter Gordon Brown calling an early election. This time Burnham and Labour have close to three years to argue the immorality of Badenoch’s wealthfare bung.
Imposing tyrannical rule on a battered party, Badenoch’s self-confidence isn’t persuading lost voters to return.
In Birmingham this week the Cons avoided last year’s mauling in Manchester when Reform co-ordinated a coach-load of councillors to defect, Nigel Farage ’s own Hard Right mob in trouble 12 months on.
But the Cons aren’t rattling No 10’s gates, the conference largely flat and sparse with star guest Jeremy Clarkson – a wealthy landowner who once admitted buying his farm to dodge inheritance tax – observing a lot of Tories appeared to be dressed as empty seats.
The best part of Badenoch’s speech attacked rival Reform for questioning whether Black Britons, such as herself and international footballers, could really be English which of course they absolutely can and are.
Yet that Badenoch position is constantly undermined by migrant-bashing scapegoating and scaremongering Tories like the Conservative frontbencher who falsely asserted no-go areas exist in Luton.
She deserved applause for a funny gag about Reform figures recently measuring the Downing Street curtains now measuring them for prison cells but pragmatism may be why she continues to rule out a deal with Farage.
More in Common pollster Luke Tryl discovered a Tory-Reform pact would be bad for both parties because too many Tories don’t like Reform and it would blunt Reform’s insurgent edge.
Almost as many Tory voters say they’d tactically vote Labour to stop Reform as would vote Reform to stop Labour. Champion of the rich Badenoch stuffing rich mouths with wealthfare gold isn’t the winner she hopes but it does show she feather-beds the haves at the cost of the have-nots.
