Develop and Enhance?

We now have a Labour Government with a historic majority. They have the strength and space to make significant and strategic change across the UK. They have the numbers and they have the power. Regrettably, if the first two months of their tenure has shown us anything, it's that such strength won't always be used for good. They had the power to protect pensioners, yet they choose to pick their pockets instead. They had the power to develop and enhance City Deals that we, as a party secured, yet they threw them into jeopardy.

In his Leader's Speech to the DUP Conference yesterday, Gavin Robinson outflanked the Government from the anti-austerity left, and he already has the record to prove it. The DUP voted to lift the two-child benefit cap, and voted against the means-testing of the Winter Fuel Payment. So did the one MP from each of the UUP and Traditional Unionist Voice. Alex Easton voted to scrap the cap, and has let it be known that he missed the winter fuel vote because of his wife's serious illness, or else he, too, would have voted against the means test.

All four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons are therefore to the left of the Government and of almost all backbench Labour MPs. The Government and almost all backbench Labour MPs are to the right of all four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons. And of the Conservative Party, and of Reform UK, since both of those abstained on the cap and voted against the means test. Indeed, apart from one rogue Conservative, no non-Labour MP voted to carry on starving children. Only Labour MPs voted to start freezing pensioners. Read that last sentence again.

But the Bank of England has found £10 billion, so neither the kiddy-starving nor the granny-freezing turns out to be necessary even in the Government's own terms. Each of them is now a purely ideological act, and anyone would think that it had never really been anything else.