Making it harder to claim Pip isn’t about ethics, as Keir Starmer says, but economics

Ask me what a Labour prime minister should feel a moral obligation to deliver and I’d put reducing child poverty at the top of the list. Sorting out our broken social care system would be up there too. One thing that wouldn’t feature: cutting disability benefits.

Yet last week Keir Starmer attempted to frame cutting the disability benefits bill as a moral, not just economic, imperative – that Labour is “the party of work” and has a duty to reduce welfare costs. To be clear: there is a broad consensus that the welfare system is working badly for disabled people and many are not getting the support they need to move into work, but that’s a world away from the £6bn of welfare cuts being considered by the government.