Fascinated that @Keir_Starmer has picked the 'contribution society' as his big theme - since we've just published a major report on contribution in welfare (which I wrote about here capx.co/fair-welfare-c…). But our report highlights the tensions for Labour/Starmer here. (1/?)
These are the first three of Starmer's 10 principles. They are absolutely where the public are. That shouldn't be a surprise - @claire_ainsley, his head of policy, literally wrote the book on this ('The New Working Class'). 
On welfare, as @JamesHeywood & @jondupont showed in our paper, the public don't think the system is fair. A big part of that is because they don't think it values past contribution - same with eg social housing allocation.
But the public take on contribution is much harder-edged than in Starmer's paper. They are clear that it involves being as tough as possible on those who refuse to work, as well as being as kind as possible to those who can't. (All polling via @yougov for our project.)
There was strong support, for example, for paying people higher benefits if they have a strong record of contribution - and indeed more support (when we polled in Feb) for linking UC uplift to contribution than retaining it outright.
But as @stephenkb points out, Starmer's essay - while stressing the importance of contribution - has very little to say about what we do about those who don't contribute. The only specific example given is businesses not pulling their weight. newstatesman.com/politics/labou…
And the broader problem for Starmer is that while this is where the public are, it is absolutely not where much of the Labour base is. See this from @FrankLuntz's polling for @CPSThinkTank
This isn't just an abstract values question. @jreynoldsMP - one of the most interesting Labour frontbenchers - floated contributory benefits last year and got absolutely pelted for it, eg being accused of 'toxic' statements that oppressed the disabled disabilitynewsservice.com/labours-new-dw…
In short, 'if you work hard you should be rewarded' risks triggering the left while sounding like pabulum to the public. Doing more to define it policy-wise solves the second problem, but may exacerbate the first...
(I should add that the same applies to tax - we published this arguing that the low-paid should get to keep more of their money, which is exactly the argument @Keir_Starmer makes in his essay! The new common ground... cps.org.uk/research/make-…)
And you can find our welfare paper and all the polling here cps.org.uk/research/fair-…
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