The scale of the dependency culture is daunting, the problems are like the heads of a hydra. Fatherless kids and dysfunctional families with chaotic workless lifestyles, their dependence on welfare transfers from the productive, working classes, creates huge problems. Children from these broken backgrounds are failed by the bog standard schools which should offer them a path to betterment. Social mobility has been destroyed in the name of educational egalitarianism.

It is bad for those who are dependent themselves and no society should tolerate cities where a quarter of the population is without work and dependent on benefits. Fraser Nelson charts worklessness by City:

Guido wishes IDS well with what is, along with Gove’s education reforms, a policy agenda as important as cutting the deficit. The Left will try and undermine the agenda case by case, but it has to be seen holistically. Labour failed in 13 years to tackle the problems, Blair realised this by his third-term, too late to do anything about it.  It has to be made more attractive to come off benefits and into work, IDS is right to worry about the disincentives to work and the marginal rates of taxation for those in the welfare trap.  The truth is that we need to also chip away at the “Shameless” culture that makes it acceptable to be permanently on welfare. The judgement on whether or not the Coalition fixed society will depend on how much they reduce the number of welfare dependants.