Imagine launching a leadership bid by promising not to rob quite as many children as you were originally planning to do. The work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, is far from alone in circling the carcass of Theresa May’s premiership – although quite how a remainer is to triumph in a vote of the Ukip-ised Tory grassroots is difficult to answer – and her speech today, appropriately in a jobcentre, certainly represents positioning.

Universal credit will be paid to women who are main carers, Rudd says Read more

As well as suggesting the benefits freeze may, possibly, end next year, her heavily trailed announcement is that the retrospective implementation of the two-child limit on universal credit won’t happen. The newly born third child of a supermarket worker, nurse or admin assistant – from the “just about managing” families May claimed to champion – will still have their support taken away.

Bear in mind that most families in poverty are actually working families, earning their poverty. And because of deliberate government policy, we’ve just had the biggest annual jump in child poverty in Britain since 1988. That the benefits freeze remains in place means real-terms cuts to the incomes of many of those struggling the most.

In classic Tory style, this raid on the poorer sections of society is accompanied by continued cuts on the taxes paid by big business who, just coincidentally, bankroll the Conservative party. That Rudd’s spinners believe cancelling a retrospective raid on desperately needed support for children provides a compassionate gloss on this class war – let’s call it what it is – must be treated as a calculated insult and nothing else.

There is positive news among all this. In the Cameron-Osborne era, benefits claimants had become so utterly demonised by government and media (and many senior Labour politicians) alike, that the war on the welfare state was met with widespread public indifference or even enthusiasm. There were relentless attempts to turn the resentment of low-paid workers against the unemployed: the logic being, don’t be angry at the boss slashing your wage, or the government cutting your in-work benefits, but at the “scrounger” living a supposed luxurious lifestyle down the road.

Osborne himself infamously played the “shift-worker” against the neighbour with their “closed blinds” who slept “off a life on benefits”. A Tory divide-and-rule strategy claimed it was “strivers” versus “shirkers”. And let us not forget that, after the 2015 general election, Labour’s transient leadership scandalously backed the Tories’ two-child benefits policy. Without Labour’s shift in political direction under Jeremy Corbyn, don’t dare to imagine the depths the party would have sunk to in a race to the bottom with the Tories.

That the Tories are being forced to shift their rhetoric shows public attitudes have moved. The cuts to social security have now hurt too many; and Labour’s redirecting of popular anger away to the vested interests at the top has reframed the debate.

That doesn’t mean Labour isn’t deserving of criticism. Although the party is committed to reversing many of the benefits cuts, the risk is too many would still remain in place. Their tax hikes on big business and the well-off should be hiked further to reverse all cuts to social security in full. But so long as the Tories remain in power, the class war from above will continue.

May claimed austerity would come to an end: the truth is, those at the top never endured it, and for the majority, austerity is set to continue indefinitely.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist