Liz Kendall, From Promises to Punishment: Labour’s Betrayal of Young Workers

Labour’s U-Turn on Youth Opportunity: From Jobs in the North East to Benefit Sanctions

Liz Kendall says young people who won’t take up work will lose benefits…

Work and pensions secretary says she will transform opportunities as Starmer bemoans ‘bulging benefits bill’

Remember the days of dead-end jobs with low pay and no prospects? When exploitative employers thrived, and Dickensian work conditions were tolerated because the choice was brutally simple: work or starve? For those of us old enough to recall the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), we recognise the machinery of exploitation being reassembled before our eyes—a system where young people were rendered powerless, mere pawns in the hands of employers who held all the cards.

Now, like a ghost from Britain’s darker past, it returns. Liz Kendall and Keir Starmer are dusting off that same cruel playbook, but this time with an even more sinister twist. Their push to slash the “bulging benefits bill” comes with an unprecedented invasion of privacy: the power to reach directly into peoples’ bank accounts.

On Sunday, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall dropped any pretence of compassion. Those who repeatedly refuse work or training will face sanctions, losing their benefits entirely. “There will be sanctions,” she declared on Sky News with chilling certainty, making clear this government’s message: comply or face destitution.

Next week’s “sweeping changes” to welfare and out-of-work support mark something far more disturbing than mere policy adjustment. Branded as “radical reforms to get Britain working” in The Mail on Sunday, Starmer promises the “biggest overhaul in memory” of employment support. Yet beneath this glossy veneer lurks an authoritarian surge—a government granting itself unprecedented powers to scrutinise private bank accounts and monitor personal expenditure.

While Starmer carefully avoids the Tory lexicon of “shirkers,” his polished rhetoric masks a brutal reality: the resurrection of punitive policies targeting society’s most vulnerable. This approach deliberately ignores the systemic rot at the heart of Britain’s employment crisis—poverty wages, zero-hour contracts, and the systemic dismantling of meaningful vocational training.

The fundamental question remains: cui bono—who benefits? Certainly not young people, coerced into dead-end positions or exploitative schemes masquerading as opportunities.

This isn’t welfare reform; it’s Victorian social engineering repackaged for the digital age. Rather than building a dignified system that uplifts and empowers, Labour appears determined to march us backward to an era when workers’ rights were sacrificed on the altar of profit, all while congratulating themselves on their “tough” approach.

This is more than policy regression—it’s a betrayal of Labour’s founding principles. The party that once stood as a bulwark against worker exploitation now seems eager to become its architect. In their rush to fill the shit jobs list and appear “credible” to the right-wing press, Starmer’s Labour has become indistinguishable from the Tories they claim to oppose.

When the state demands the power to monitor your bank account while forcing young people into exploitative work schemes, we’re not witnessing reform—we’re watching the birth of a new form of social control, where privacy and dignity are sacrificed in the name of fiscal responsibility. This isn’t the way forward; it’s a dangerous step backward into the shadows of our past.

The Labour Party has moved so far from its original purpose: to protect the vulnerable, uplift the working class, and build a society based on dignity and opportunity—not to reinvent the mechanisms of Victorian-era social control for the 21st century.

Asking for a friend, what happened to creating meaningful work and opportunities for young people?

Before the election Labour promised to create jobs in the North East for young people in key institutions. Now they promise to force them into any old job…

The bitter irony of Labour’s current punitive turn becomes even more stark when we recall their pre-election promises, still echoing like hollow drums across the North East. Remember Angela Rayner’s grand proclamations? The “youth guarantee,” the promised land of “Technical Excellence Colleges,” the pledge of nearly 2,000 more young people guided into “good education, employment or training opportunities.”

Those words ring particularly hollow now, don’t they?

They promised 60,876 more hours of professional careers advice for young people in the North East. Instead, they’re offering the stick of benefit sanctions. They pledged support for 47,000 young people not in education, employment, or training. Now they’re threatening to cut them off entirely.

“The choice at this election is five more years of chaos and decline under the Tories, or stability, opportunity and wealth creation with Labour,” Rayner declared with characteristic conviction. Yet here we are, watching Labour morph into the very force they claimed to oppose, wielding the threat of destitution like a weapon.

“You can believe that Labour is committed to tackling regional inequality in Britain because it is in our DNA,” she assured us. But DNA, it seems, can mutate. The party that promised to “relight the fire of the North East” is now more interested in burning those who don’t comply with their Victorian vision of work discipline.

The “stability” they promised has become the stability of the workhouse. The “opportunity” has transformed into an ultimatum: take what you’re given or starve. And “wealth creation”? Well, that’s still on the agenda – just not for the working class.

This isn’t just policy failure – it’s a betrayal of Labour’s foundational promises. Instead of creating the “jobs we want for our kids,” they’re resurrecting the ghosts of YTS and forcing young people into whatever work their corporate donors demand. Rather than “rebuilding our economy hand in hand with local leaders,” they’re granting themselves unprecedented powers to monitor peoples’ bank accounts and enforce compliance.

Labour’s pre-election promises and their post-election actions tell the story of a party that has lost its way – or perhaps finally revealed its true direction. The “Red Tory” transformation is complete. The party of Keir Hardie has become the party of Keir Starmer, where the only guarantee for young people is the guarantee of punishment if they dare to demand better.

This isn’t the “fire of the North East” being relit – it’s the burning of everything Labour once claimed to stand for. And for those who believed in those promises, who dared to hope for real change? They’re left with nothing but ashes and the cold comfort of knowing that once again, the Labour Party has proven that power corrupts, and the promise of power corrupts absolutely.

Paul Knaggs

Editor, founder, Labour Heartlands, Citizen journalist. LeFT wing political refugee. Fighting a constant struggle with dyslexia that’s overcome with a burning desire to speak out against the corrupt political system and the social injustices it creates. Advocate for Free speech and open, accountable, democracy. #GTTO