Cameron's assault on the young isn't callous – it's much worse than that

Let us hope this plan to stop supporting the under-25s is just posturing. The sheer barbarism of the outlined idea is breathtaking

'Let no one paint ideas like this as callous,' said David Cameron in his speech to the Conservative conference. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

It would be wrong to think of David Cameron's proposals to take key benefits away from the under-25s as a new initiative. They form merely the latest chapter in a chilling horror story that began shortly after the coalition took the reins, with the tripling of university tuition fees, the abolition of educational maintenance allowance and the future jobs fund, and was still under way this summer when the chancellor's spending review slashed another £260m from the further education budget.

It would be also be a mistake to describe this as a "war on the young" as many commentators have done. A war implies two sides vying for supremacy. This is a strictly unilateral assault, a grand act of persecution. Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.

We can take some comfort in knowing that the latest wheezes, to refuse out of work and housing benefits to any young person not in employment or training, may simply be posturing. There is a policy review process, a manifesto and the small matter of winning another election between here and catastrophe, but the sheer barbarism of the outlined idea is breathtaking. As proposed, there is no suggestion that a job or training place will be guaranteed as the quid pro quo from the state. The consequences could include the ridiculous scenario where someone who has left school, trained in a trade, worked and paid tax and national insurance for five years, possibly starting a family, then loses their job at age 23 only to find him or herself without any social security safety net.

It makes no sense as a social policy – anyone who has worked with or known Neet youngsters could explain that these individuals are disproportionately likely to have been through the care system, escaped abusive backgrounds or been thrown out of their family home. Not every young person can scurry back to Mummy and Daddy when times get hard. Neet youngsters need more support, greater assistance, more compassion than anyone if they are to get themselves on path to a fruitful future. In the late 1980s, changes to benefits for 16- to 18-year-olds led directly to the youth homelessness crisis, cardboard cities and an explosion of heroin addiction and alcoholism on the streets, with all their associated impacts. Agencies were still struggling with the fallout a decade later. This proposal makes those changes look like a tickle with a feather.

Nor does it make any sense as an economic policy. Unemployed young people left destitute will not be magically transformed into sharp-suited young entrepreneurs, or walk into jobs and training places that do not exist. They will become regular guests of the health service and social services at best, the prison service at worst. The suggested savings of £2bn to the housing benefit bill will quickly be sucked up with interest.
Whether or not the proposal ever comes to fruition, we should have no doubt why the prime minister included the measures in his speech on Wednesday. It was not to demonstrate his concern for the welfare of a million underemployed, under-skilled young people. It was an act of misdirection worthy of a cheap stage magician, shifting responsibility for economic failure onto those who were barely out of primary school when it happened, a shameless act of divide and rule.

"Let no one paint ideas like this as callous," David Cameron commanded, and he can have his wish. That word does not even get close to the downright venality, wickedness and cruelty on display.

Guardian