{"id":80968,"date":"2025-03-20T13:47:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T13:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=80968"},"modified":"2025-03-20T13:47:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T13:47:20","slug":"torsten-bell-displaying-his-true-neoliberal-colours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/03\/20\/torsten-bell-displaying-his-true-neoliberal-colours\/","title":{"rendered":"Torsten Bell displaying his true neoliberal colours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This comes from Newsnight on Tuesday night. Victoria Derbyshire, who is one of the best interviewers the BBC now has, was interviewing Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, about benefits cuts.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cCould you live on \u00a370 a week?\u201d| Victoria Derbyshire challenges Minister on benefits reform\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C9Jo_HCiZvU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Until recently, Torsten Bell was at the Resolution Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The position he took in this interview - very aggressively and utterly inappropriately - making claims along the way that are utterly unjustified about young people supposedly being written off by the benefits system when, in reality, he is seeking to coerce young people unable to work to do so in a way that might be profoundly harmful to them - is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>As Victoria Derbyshire pointed out, the Resolution Foundation has criticised what he is defending.<\/p>\n<p>But let me be clear: I do not believe for a moment that they believe what they are staying either.<\/p>\n<p>As I often pointed out when Bell was at that so-called Foundation, he is profoundly neoliberal to his very core. People told me otherwise, but I knew I was right. Now everyone can see that he is.<\/p>\n<p>I still think the Resioltuon Foundation is staffed by people who are. That's what supposed left-of-centre think tanks are like. They are made up of people whose ambition is to become an MP when they sell out all the principles they once claimed they possessed so that they can deliver the neoliberalism they were taught at university - which is the closest they have ever come to reality.<\/p>\n<p>I never trusted Bell. I now know I was right not to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This comes from Newsnight on Tuesday night. Victoria Derbyshire, who is one of the best interviewers the BBC now has, was interviewing Torsten Bell, the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/03\/20\/torsten-bell-displaying-his-true-neoliberal-colours\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,204,35,16,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80970,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80968\/revisions\/80970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}