As British politics increasingly eats itself, and as my fellow Liberal Democrats compete for space before the national media, one can't help but notice that, regardless of what one might think of the Government, our national debate appears to be lurching from one witch hunt to another.
Migrants from Eastern and Central Europe, the young, the unemployed, the LGBT community, Muslims, all seem to make good scapegoats for politicians who offer very little in the way of solutions but seem quite good at sound bites.
UKIP's problems with, basically, anyone unlike them are fairly predictable. If you're going to base your appeal on taking a hard line against foreigners, you're going to attract some pretty unlikeable supporters. At least we've gotten a good laugh out of the latest product of their fruitcake production facility, courtesy of @UKIPweather. And, given that they don't run anything serious, and don't actually do anything but rant in a futile way in Brussels and Strasbourg - gentlemen, you don't change much if you don't take part - one tends to worry less about them than one might otherwise do.
No, I tend to worry about people who hold, or may soon hold, power, and one really does need to pay attention there. So, when Rachel Reeves MP is reported to be thinking about the notion of withdrawing benefits from under-25's, my antennae twitch. It's not a story which has received much attention, so it may just be another piece of shoddy journalism, but the apparent lack of a denial does imply that the story might have some truth to it.
The story goes on to suggest that Labour are considering a linkage between contributions made and benefits due, a concept which sounds plausible until you reword it a little, say, to those that had, we will give, to those that didn't, we might not be as beneficent. Does this mean a decoupling of the benefits system from the level of need, and how attractive might such a concept be to the more vulnerable members of society?
I admit that it doesn't appeal very much, even if a Labour administration were minded to find ways to ameliorate the potential downside for certain groups.
What it does indicate, however, is that, in an attempt to shore up support within a key voting demographic, i.e. older people, politicians, even Labour ones, are willing to consider throwing others under the proverbial bus - lest we not forget, the 18-25 age bracket turns out to vote in smaller numbers than any other.
Apparently, we may not all be in this together...
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