by Nick Moss
How hard, it seems, is it to become convinced that the spirit of love, if it is to be genuinely beneficent – and therefore really kind – must be disciplined, like the activities of the physician and the sanitary engineer, by the knowledge of how things happen, and can be made to happen, in the world we live in.
– Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 5
We protected working people (1)
The Labour Party is the party of work (2)
The shadowplay sleight of hand,
The “Now you see it, now you don’t”
Slip from dented shield
To Capital’s enforcer
A government not stepping back, but stepping up (3)
Careless. Caring-less. Couldn’t care less
The £5 billion heist.
No gloves, no bally.
In plain sight.
Running round Parliament Square
Shoutin “Gang, gang, gang, gang”
I fixed the foundations of our economy to deliver on the promise of change (4)
Streeting and Farage vie for places
On the reinstated Lunacy Commission,
Lips wet at the opportunity
To scourge all the over diagnosed
Pretenders to pauperism,
With a new slogan for a new era –
“Codify everyone who asketh of thee”.
Discipline. The management
And manipulation of poverty.
The social democrat’s rancorous suspicion of the poor.
“We’re not the party of people on benefits.
We’re not the party to represent those out of work” (5)
Fitting scold’s bridles to single parents
To stifle their whinings of penurious despondency.
“The big savings to be had are by tackling the root causes of the benefits bill” (6)
The days are gone when work was seen
For what it was –
A dominion over
(And robbery of) the working class.
So submit to the grind
There are too many shirkers and scroungers,
And they are given too much and live too long
Arbeit, only arbeit… for the likes of us.
Arbeit. Always.
“Promises made…promises kept” (7)
NOTES
(1)(3)(4)(7) Spring Statement 2025 speech, as delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
(2) Keir Starmer, The Times 18 March 2025
(5) Rachel Reeves,The Guardian 17 March 2015
(6) Ibid.
