“Handouts from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity”. Who said that? Margaret Thatcher? Norman Tebbit? George Osborne?

No, it was Labour leader Keir Starmer writing in The Sunday Telegraph this weekend. He added that while Labour “will never turn our backs on people who are struggling” he believes that “serving the interests of working people means understanding they want success more than state support”.

The thing is we all want success, but in a market-driven economy that is neither guaranteed nor within our own personal remit to deliver.

It was this rather obvious reality that led to building the modern welfare state. That post-war Labour government recognised that we have collective duties to each other in a society, and that a social safety net must be paid for collectively to ensure those in need did not suffer poverty, squalor or be at risk of higher incidence of disease.

In his Telegraph article, Starmer wrote: “it’s unusual for a Labour leader to put wealth creation front and centre.” That’s debatable, but what is uniquely unusual is for a Labour leader to be so........

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