Why don’t Labour get it?

It’s not a state benefit. They worked and paid into it their whole lives.

This is the fault of Tony Blair's "all young people should go to uni". No, the only people who should go are those academically inclined. We desperately need builders etc and apprenticeship programmes, not young people with useless media studies degrees and huge loans. Bring back technical colleges and recognise universities are not for everyone.

I don’t care. It’s going to bankrupt the country. I also believe they should go one step further and means test the state pension for anyone aged 60 and above. Why should people with huge private pensions, rental properties and the like, claim a state benefit?

We need to change our attitude to work and our expectations of work. Frankly, a lot of people don’t just need support to work, they need to just get on and work.

And you think there wouldn’t be a major kick back? Also pensioners vote

Cut welfare spending. Which parts would you cut? The largest part of the welfare budget is pensions. That expenditure has been growing and growing as the population has been getting older. And that's the main problem right there. People are living longer, are drawing pensions for far longer and for obvious reasons older people use more public services such as healthcare so spending on that has to increase.

I agree. I'm surprised you didn't mention this OP. Generational unfairness.

Its not as easy as saying get building. There are only so many skilled bricklayers, plumbers, electricians etc. to do the work. It's nigh on impossible to get a good tradesman to do a small job because most are already employed building houses.

It was so disappointing when they tried to cut welfare their own backbenchers (and the press) scuppered it. Why does this country have so many more people with mental health problems than the rest of the world?

Putting up taxes or scrapping triple lock is political suicide but has to be done - the aging population is crippling the UK

The one thing they could do to solve some of the issues is cutting the triple lock for state pensions.

On your first point about welfare, they (“they” being the front bench) tried to cut welfare and no one was happy about it. You can’t say it was a widely popular change, just read the MN threads at the time. The Tories said it was cruel (despite their manifesto saying they’d cut more than double what Labour was going to, and I don’t see how that was possible without them being cruel by their own definition), and the Labour backbench wouldn’t support it.
Everyone lost their minds over the WFA changes.
So what specific (not vague “support for those who need it”) changes would you bring in that would get through and have public support - I assume you want it to have public support since you want to keep Reform out.

And scrapping the two child benefit cap, which I think is pretty much guaranteed now, is a Reform policy. They support that increased welfare.