Keir Starmer’s Labour government is a corrupt, elitist, soulless mess. But we shouldn’t just feel sick about it wheeling out an arrogant machine politician to defend its cruel welfare cuts. We should feel sick that he expects people to survive on as little as £70 pounds a week when a recent side hustle earned him £82 for just ONE HOUR of work.
Everyone should watch Torsten Bell’s performance on Newsnight last night. Utterly appalling. His comment when Derbyshire asked if he could survive on £70 p w ‘Of course not I have a mortgage.’ Elitist and arrogant. https://t.co/6jWMRtjIFe
— Pamela Fitzpatrick (@pamelafitz4HW) March 19, 2025
Torsten Henricson Bell has a long history on the Labour right, but only became an MP in 2024. Nonetheless, Starmer has already anointed him with the roles of “Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury), and Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)”. And he thoroughly embarrassed himself on Newsnight.
When journalist Victoria Derbyshire asked him in simple terms “to buy food, to pay bills, 70 quid a week? You’ve just told me you couldn’t live on that”, he answered:
Well no. I have a mortgage to pay.
And it’s no surprise he’s so out of touch. Because on his registered interests, he has just recorded doing 10 hours of work for The Observer for a massive sum of £826.69. That’s definitely a much higher hourly rate than most actual journalists get. But poignantly, it’s more money per hour than his government expects people to be able to survive on for a whole damn week.
The unholy resurrection of Torsten Bell
Labour isn’t doing something clever with its shameless attacks on people who are facing the biggest challenges. It may get a few big corporate donations to compensate for all the ordinary members it has pushed away under Starmer. But it’s not making itself any more popular with the right. The Daily Mail, for example, responded to Bell’s TV car crash by calling him “the living embodiment of what people hate about Labour“.
As the Canary‘s HG has reported, Bell was previously “the chief executive of the generally progressive thinktank the Resolution Foundation” from 2015 to 2024:
However, as the Canary revealed on Monday, the Resolution Foundation was the brainchild behind some of Labour’s regressive plans for the Universal Credit health-related component.
Bell’s story goes further back, though. Because as the charity points out:
Prior to leading the Resolution Foundation, Torsten worked in HM Treasury, as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the financial crisis, and as Director of Policy for the Labour Party.
He was “Ed Miliband’s policy chief“, “the brains behind the Edstone” (a disastrous 2015 election PR stunt for those too young to remember), and a former adviser of ex-chancellor Alistair Darling (the one who “saved capitalism” back in 2007/8). People called Bell “totally devoid of any politics“, “one of those arrogant oafs with brains to spare but no common sense”, and a “gaffe-prone” figure who “never tires of telling us how ferociously clever he is”. A political chameleon, he was apparently hoping to land a safe seat back in 2015, but that never happened.
Forgiving the mess-ups of Bell’s past in politics, Starmer clearly thought he was the right kind of person to be at the heart of his heartless government. And the new MP has faithfully backed each awful position the PM has pushed on behalf of his corporate donors. Bell’s brother Olaf, meanwhile, “leads No 10’s policy unit”.
Featured image via the Canary
