For much of its short but celebrated life, the Welfare State was cherished by Britons. Instant public affection greeted its birth and even as it passed away peacefully yesterday morning, government ministers swore they would do all they could to keep it alive.
The Welfare State's huge appeal lay in its combination of simplicity and assurance. A safety net to catch those fallen on hard times, come rain or shine, boom or bust, it would be there for all those who had paid in.
Such universality allowed people to project on to it whatever they wished. Welfare State's father, the Liberal William Beveridge, described his offspring as "an attack on Want", one of the five evil giants that had to be slain in postwar Britain. But for future Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, "Social security to us can only mean socialism".
Yet there were critics. Indeed, it is thought that as late as yesterday, an unnamed twentysomething PPE graduate at Policy Exchange was revising a document entitled "What's Wrong with Welfare?" In the end, however, it was not a rightwing think tank that killed Welfare. The proximate cause of death was a change in child benefit from being available to all to a means-tested entitlement. That marked the end of one of the last remaining universal benefits, in turn causing a fatal injury to Welfare.
Source; Guardian
