Labour cannot be seen to reward people who want an 'easy ride', says Andy Burnham.
The favourite to replace Ed Miliband as party leader, he believes Labour can only regain voters' trust by supporting working people, and avoiding being tagged as the party of welfare and high spending.
But no right thinking person is against people working, and the myth of the benefit scrounger, while enduring, is largely a myth.
While there was in the past an element of society who had apparently become 'dependent' upon social security payments, and showed no desire to change their circumstances, they were always a minority and the circumstances were often more complicated than anecdotal evidence suggested.
But the popular image of large-scale cross-generational dependency and living on benefits as a lifestyle has repeatedly been shown to be false.
When the Government promoted figures in April 2013 which appeared to show a million people fit to work but living on benefits, the figures were shown to be badly wrong. A map of 'workshy' Britain published a month later highlighted Glasgow among 20 UK hotspots for people fit to work but claiming benefits. However the statistics appeared to reflect the size of cities rather than anything more telling.
Last year academics studied Glasgow and Teeside and failed to find evidence of benefits 'ghettoes' where relying on welfare was a lifestyle choice, or families in which generations were out of work.
The ability to live comfortably on benefits, untroubled by the authorities does not now remotely reflect reality, if it ever did. Neither the level of benefits, nor the amount of interference now imposed on job seekers make it in any way a comfortable option.
So why is the spectre of the workshy scrounger still so prevalent?
Prior to the general election Rachel Reeves, shadow work and pensions secretary, felt obliged to insist that Labour was not the party for benefits claimants, nor for people who are out of work.
This is despite the fact that in-work benefits such as tax credits - which effectively subsidise low pay by employers - lead to significant crossover between those claiming support and those in work. The number of working recipients of housing benefit has almost doubled in the space of five years.
And being out of work is not the same as being workshy. Research in one sector - retail - in 2012 found between 24 and 66 job-seekers pursuing every job.
Ms Reeves proclamations did not work, so will it help Andy Burnham, or any future Labour leader to occupy this space? The party faces a Catch-22. Politicians feel they must respond to false public perceptions about the workshy, and in doing so help reinforce those same illusions.
Leaving aside the fact that a very different style of message found favour with voters in Scotland, Labour would do better to address voters genuine fears about the impact of migrant workers on pay levels in some industries, and tackling the other issues behind in work poverty.
Rethinking Labour's positioning and approach must go deeper than a trite support for 'aspiration'. There is no quick fix for the party's problems.
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