Jonn Harris presents us with what is meant to be incontrovertible evidence that there’s something wrong with the current polity:

Welfare policy was driven by austerity, which was so drastic that an estimated £37bn was cut from benefits spending between 2010 and 2021.

Spending on benefits is lower. That’s just proof that there’s something wrong, a decade of Tory austerity, etc etc.

Except a lower benefits bill is proof of no such thing. For we all desire that the benefits bill be zero, precisely and exactly zero. Where folk might differ is the reason for it being zero.

Imagine a world in which no one needed benefits. Well paid and fulfilling work was available to all, no one had any problems that prevented them from doing such work (yes, we know, fantasy, but bear with us for the purpose of the argument). This would be a wondrous world and one in which the benefits bill would righteously and gloriously be zero.

It’s also possible to posit one in which we just leave the poor dying in the streets as if this were the Georgian Era come back to haunt us. That would not be a wondrous nor glorious reason for a benefits bill of zero.

But both situations would mean that zero bill. Meaning that we cannot take as provative that a reduction in the benefits bill is a bad thing. It could be that the need for benefits has declined.

As, you know, it might have done since 2010. Back when the unemployment rate was nudging 8% and today it’s under 4%.

Please note that we are not insisting here that the benefits bill is the right size now, or was then, or that either were wrong. We’re commenting merely upon the logic being deployed. It simply is not true that we can just point to the amount of money being spent upon a problem and start shouting that if it has declined then something is wrong. For it is indeed possible that problems actually get solved and therefore need less money spent upon them.

The why of the declining bill is the important point, not the size of it.