This is what is so maddening about this stuff. It's been tried! Very recently! The results were extremely bad and extensively researched! But there is zero interrogation of that either by the think tanks that produce these policies or the journalists writing them up.

You may be thinking of Child Benefit (which does have a high income threshold incidentally). The Two Child Limit restricts support for children through Universal Credit, which is income based.

Love the suggestion that this guy will never work in politics again and his career is effectively over. Let's see how that prediction works out eh.

This is like saying 'I miss Bill Hicks. There are those on the left who think American imperialism is ultimately to blame for conflicts in the Middle East'. Has he ever watched Norm Macdonald?

I'm always really happy to see you're on, it's always a great ep

I think any evaluation of them as a programme would be tricky as boroughs all use them in very different ways, even within London there's a lot of variation. Would probably have to be borough by borough, or looking at different 'models' of how to use them.

Always nice to see an article which has started with the Principal Skinner 'am I out of touch?' meme as a first draft and just gone from there.

The screenshot in the post you are replying to...

This guidance literally tells them who can and cannot be in their groups, that's the problem.

It's also a symptom of the last 5 years and the decline of political journalism/commentary. Why are they talking about the hypothetical result of an election that will take place in 4 YEARS time as if it's happening next month? They're just not equipped to talk about politics anymore.

Certainly paints his sudden run of interviews critical of Farage in a different light if all this stuff was rumbling on in the background and he knew it was coming out soon.

Also seems bizarre how much quibbling is going on over variations on the policy which are barely cheaper than just getting rid of it. Even a three child limit, a joke policy you would make up to satire centrist approaches to policymaking, still costs 2/3rds of just scrapping it entirely.

I agree, it's a positive sign. It would be great to see this long term, with employment support services embedded in community settings. 'Bringing support to people where they are' is an approach that LAs are increasingly taking, hopefully this is a sign Govt. is following suit!

I'd be interested in the extent that Cummings actually 'masterminded' it (doubtful imo), or whether it was a more a case of a right place right time situation where a whole host of people's interests aligned. A really mad period, so much really dodgy stuff memory holed.