THE government may have a mandate for thinking the unthinkable over welfare reform, but when it comes to doing it, it may find that many of its MPs and the public do not share its resolve.

And it is already receiving clear warnings of big trouble if it goes ahead with cuts in benefits for the disabled.

Indeed it would face a far bigger mutiny than the back-bench revolt last week over the cuts in single parents' benefits.

For while the ethic may be the same - getting those on benefit who are able to work into jobs, providing assistance for them to do so and rooting out the scroungers - there is a line drawn that governments cross at great political risk.

And, clearly, Conservative leader William Hague identifies it when he says the Tories would support government plans to control costs and reduce dependency on welfare - hence their backing for the cuts in lone parents' benefit - but would stop at backing benefit cuts for the disabled.

Yet who can deny the government its duty to try to reduce the £100million welfare bill and to make the system affordable for the future so that there is always help for those who most need it?

And in the case of disability payments, the boom in the number of claimants defies logic. The Tories made much of this when, in government, they were seeking to tighten the same screw.

But, however much the government insists that it will not take benefit away from those who need it or points to the £195million it is making available from the windfall tax to help disabled people get off benefit and into work, it will have a mighty hard time with the imagery - which is that of impoverishing people in wheelchairs.

It is a task that will test the government's spin doctors and its reforming resolve to the limit.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.