WHEN the government ask how they can reduce poverty, how they can get more people into work, and how they can reduce the country’s welfare bill, the answer should be complex.

It is a difficult question requiring a long-term strategy and, perhaps most crucially, a lack of political interference.

“Long-term” in politics means “cross-party”. It means getting politicians around the table, making difficult decisions and agreeing on a policy that will last beyond one or two parliamentary terms.

We have seen this done before in this country and in others. It makes for good policy.

What makes for bad policy is knee-jerk reaction and a fear of the right-wing press.

Kowtowing to what you think are the very worst of your voters’ prejudices does not make you a listening government.

Sanctions are bad policy. They are inhumane.

What sort of person thinks the best way to punish someone for being late or missing an appointment at the Jobcentre is to force them into destitution?

Not only is it bad policy, but it is bad policy implemented incompetently.

New data show that almost half of all sanctions imposed on recipients of Employment Support Allowance and Jobseeker’s Allowance have been overturned on review. It is simply shameful.

What is more shameful is that many of those who have sanctions imposed on them won’t know they can appeal.

The point of sanctions is to encourage the workless to go out and find work. The evidence suggests that they don’t achieve that.

Let us not shy away from the fact that most people who are hurt by sanctions are already vulnerable and disadvantaged. Despite what the poverty porn of Channel 4 and some newspapers would suggest, these are not people claiming thousands while sitting idle.

These are people who have already been failed by society and by government. They are families, often with young children, who are subject to an incompetent bureaucracy instead of help.

Instead of helping them, and instead of trying to find a way to make our society truly equal, the government punish and starve.

It is positively Victorian.

Brown’s big clunking fist misses his target entirely

IT was the return of the great clunking fist. Gordon Brown only now seems to appear if it’s a dramatic last-minute intervention.

This man, a former PM and former Chancellor who is no longer an MP, can still command an audience. Yesterday Sky News and the BBC both broadcast his speech live. You can bet all of the leadership contenders were watching.

Rambling it may have been, and his incessant pacing made it difficult to watch without feeling a little sea-sick, and there was a lot of name dropping, but it was an intelligent and clever speech. What was striking was how wrong Brown got it about why people are backing Corbyn.

Those backing Corbyn want change.

That is why there is much resistance to Corbyn: he represents change. Kendall, Burnham and Cooper represent things as they are.

We are witnessing something unusual in the Labour Party. Who knows how it is going to end?