Middle England was “terrified”. This was the word I heard over and over from people on the street outside Biggleswade JobCentre, a low-slung shoebox of municipal green wedged between The Rose and Good Pheasant pubs – windows reflecting Union Jack bunting in a haberdashery opposite. This is a solid slice of commuterville England: war memorial on the green, mock-Tudor curry house, VE Day posters and Pride flyers plastered about.
The government’s welfare reforms – removing PIP from future claimants other than for the severest cases – will hit the post-industrial north and coastal towns hardest, better-off parts of Britain like this Bedfordshire market town will face an unexpected embarrassment of circumstances – one that ministers don’t appear to have foreseen.