Reeves ‘condemns’ Farage despite agreeing with him a few months ago

Rachel Reeves has slammed Nigel Farage’s opposition to Labour’s announcement to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Speaking to The Guardian, the chancellor condemned the Reform leader’s comments that lifting the cap will benefit foreign nationals.

Reeves gets to call Farage a racist, basically

On Wednesday, 7 January, Farage confirmed that Reform would vote against the two-child cap. This is despite them previously calling for the government to scrap the cap.

Being Farage, this was, of course, for racist reasons. He told a press conference that lifting the cap would

benefit huge numbers of foreign-born people

This was an easy goal for Labour; all they had to do was not appear to be massive racists. And surprisingly, they managed it.

In response, Reeves told The Guardian:

I don’t really care what colour a kid’s skin is – some deserve to be in poverty and some don’t? That makes me pretty angry

Which is a hypocritical statement for someone to make who until recently was more than happy to keep hundreds of thousands of children in poverty.

She carried on:

Does Nigel Farage want to go around and say: ‘White? Yeah, you can have the money. Black? No, I’m sorry, it’s not for you.’ What sort of country does he think we are?

If you’re the mum next door who works in the NHS, has lived here all her life, her kids lived here all their life, but she was born somewhere else – we’re saying that that family deserves to grow up in poverty whereas the one next door doesn’t? That’s not the sort of country I believe in.

Reeves claims Labour suddenly cares about kids in poverty

The Guardian reports that the chancellor said it had been a burden for her not to be able to lift the cap sooner. But if that’s true, why did she and the rest of the Labour party vote against lifting the cap in 2024?

Reeves also said that Labour’s battle was now in winning over the public to back the measure. But it would’ve been a lot easier if the government hadn’t spent their first year and a half back in power demonising benefit claimants.

It’s, ironically, pretty fucking rich that Reeves is now claiming to be this great champion of the working class. Especially considering she’s one of the architects of the harshest cuts disabled poor people have ever faced. As well as that, she’s done her fair share of pledging to force disabled kids into low-paying work. So, evidently, it’s only the non-disabled kids she cares about.

Farage in favour of the cap when Labour hated it

But it’s not just Labour who have changed their minds now it suits them. As the Canary reporter Rose Cocker pointed out yesterday, Reform were also all in favour of lifting the cap until very recently.

Farage stated at the time that:

We built this party around three key principles: things that we think need to be fought for and defended, things that we think most people in this country hold the dearest in their hearts – and that is, of course: family; community; and country.

And that is why we believe lifting the two child cap is the right thing to do – not because we support a benefits culture, but because we believe for lower paid workers this actually makes having children just a little bit easier for them.

Then, when Labour announced they would be lifting the cap, Farage changed his mind and backtracked. He instead claimed that Reform would only support the cap being lifted for

“working British people, meaning a couple who both work 37.5 hours a week”.

However, as the Independent pointed out

New Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) analysis shows that of the 470,000 households affected by the two-child limit (in receipt of Universal Credit with three or more children, of whom the third was born after 6 April 2017), just 3,700 – less than 0.8 per cent of the total – have two adults working full-time.

Politicians only care about poor people when they can use them

At the end of the day, things like this just show how childish and petty politicians are. They won’t be associated with something, despite how good it is, if someone they don’t like is. They’re like spoiled kids who pretend they didn’t want the toy in the first place.

What is clear is that politicians don’t actually care how many poor kids they feed or starve. They only see them as a political football they can use to score points against the rest of the millionaires. And that says it all about how the whole damn lot of the political class sees the working class.

Featured image via the Canary