CRABB:THE POOR BOY LIBERATED FROM LIFE ON WELFARE
STEPHEN Crabb launched his bid for the Tory leadership last night with a swipe at Boris Johnson’s public school background.
The Work and Pensions Secretary presented himself as the ‘blue collar candidate’ for the top job. He hit out at Mr Johnson’s comment in 2013 that he would like to be leader if the ‘ball came loose from the back of the scrum’.
Mr Crabb pointed out that, unlike Etoneducated Mr Johnson, he had had to learn to grab opportunities rather than waiting for them to fall into his lap. He said: ‘On the rainy rugby fields of West Wales I learned that it is not a question of waiting for the ball to pop out of the back of the scrum’.
Mr Crabb said he had a ‘fabulous education at a really good comprehensive school across the road from the council house where I lived’.
He acknowledged he is the underdog in the Tory leadership race but unveiled his joint ticket with Business Secretary Sajid Javid, who would be his Chancellor. Mr Crabb, who backed Remain during the referendum campaign, said there could be no way to ‘subvert’ the Brexit process.
Mr Crabb set out his aims for the negotiations, saying: ‘The one message that came through louder than any other in the vote last week is that the British people want to control immigration.’
WHENEVEr Welfare Secretary Stephen Crabb leaves his constituency office in West Wales, he deliberately takes a look at a nearby council-run sheltered housing complex.
For it is there – in a tiny one-bedroom flat – that his 72-year-old father, Philip, has lived alone and on benefits for almost 45 years.
For Crabb, there are no happy childhood memories of his father who subjected his mother, Jacqui, to years of emotional and physical abuse.
‘one of my earliest memories is of getting between my mother and father as he came at her with a knife – terrifying,’ says Crabb.
Not surprisingly, at the age of eight, his mum took their three sons to her parents’ two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow. Crabb never lived under the same roof as his father again.
Despite such a horrific relationship with his father, the two men had a private reunion in March – although Crabb has never spoken publicly about how the meeting went.
The rest of his childhood was spent living hand-to-mouth as his family relied on sickness benefits and hand- outs from the local Baptist church. Young Crabb was mocked by other children as his mum couldn’t afford a school uniform and he played truant to go potatopicking for money to buy training shoes.
With such a tough background, Stephen Crabb, 43, is a rare specimen in David Cameron’s ex- public schoolboydominated Cabinet.
Eventually, having returned to Haverfordwest, his mother slowly weaned herself off welfare payments, getting a job in an office.
As for the young Crabb, being a bright lad, he read avidly – especially newspapers (keeping a scrapbook of the Falklands War in 1982 when he was only nine).
AFTEr attending the local state school, he studied politics at Bristol University. Summer jobs included work on a building site and labouring in Newport docks – where he lived in a tent.
At university, he met his French wife Beatrice, who now runs his constituency office. They have a son and a daughter at state secondary school. A keen rugby player and fanatical supporter of the Welsh national side, he plays for the Commons and Lords team.
After graduating, he joined the Tories, gained an MBA at London Business School and forged a career in the voluntary sector. He also worked in policy for the London Chamber of Commerce and became a marketing consultant.
Elected as an MP in 2005, his promotion from Welsh Secretary to Secretary for Work and Pensions in March (after Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation) offered him the chance to help those at the bottom of society – a place he’d managed to escape.
Indeed, Crabb has movingly recalled when his family was liberated from benefits. ‘When my mother bought our first car, a third-hand VW Polo that cost £700, that’s a hell of a big deal! Before that, we’d use public transport. We’d have day-trips to the beach on a bus – which were lovely of course – but the difference in your social and economic opportunities when you have a car is enormous.’
‘The most powerful thing to me, looking back, is the way that my mother went through a crisis in her life and became welfare-dependent. As we got older, [she] moved progressively from a position of complete welfare dependency to being fully economically independent, working full-time. That has to be the model of the way the welfare system should work.’
It was no surprise that he recalled his upbringing while launching his leadership campaign yesterday – saying: ‘Nothing was handed to me on a plate.’ While he never mentioned millionaire old Etonian Boris Johnson by name, the inference was intended to be noticed.
Crabb’s aim is to give a voice to the working classes who were empowered by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s but who feel their interests are now ignored by the two main parties.
At a time of cuts and having taken over from Duncan Smith who had quit in protest at proposed reductions to disability benefits, Crabb faced formidable challenges.
When he backed cuts to employment support allowance for the disabled that critics claimed would leave claimants £ 30 a week worse, vandals daubed “Why do you hate the sick?” on his office door. An online petition called for him to be removed as a patron of mental health charity MENCAP.
Crabb was unfazed. His guiding principle is for a welfare sys- tem that provides ‘support and basis for transformation in people’s lives.’ A favourite phrase is: ‘Behind every statistic is a human being.’
While he voted remain, he insists he’s not a ‘bought-up, paid-up member of the EU family’.
As regard other policies, he voted against the legalisation of same- sex marriages – and attracted criticism for his past links with a charity that sponsored a ‘gay cure’ conference in 2009 that looked at ‘therapeutic approaches to same- sex attraction’.
The Christian Action research and Education charity ‘actively supports and encourages marriage between a man and a woman’ and at its events, gay and bisexual people are referred to as ‘sexually broken’ and told that they can become ‘ex-gay’.
FoUr years ago, the charity placed 20 interns with several MPs, including Crabb. Five MPs, including Labour’s David Lammy and Liz Kendall severed their ties with the group when they learnt about the attempts to re- educate homosexuals. Crabb, though, has since said: ‘ Yes, I’m a Christian – but believing in gay cure therapies is not what I believe and has never been what I believe.”
Days before last year’s general election, Stephen Crabb was asked about his leadership ambitions. He replied: ‘I don’t have time to engage in fantasy politics about my own career.’
Today, he is the bookies’ third favourite at 8/1. Could the fantasy possibly become a reality?