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Opinion

The coming benefit cuts will create more negativity for Labour. Why don’t they get that?

15 Mar 2025 6 minute read
Anti Tory protests in 2019. Photo John Gomez / Shutterstock.com

Martin Shipton

In 2016 the Ken Loach-directed film I, Daniel Blake won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

It was a compelling piece of social criticism typical of Loach, and of a type we see too little of: as TS Eliot wrote, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality”.

Far from the escapist fantasies beloved of many cinema goers, Loach’s film exposed the cruelty of benefit cuts, especially as they affected people who were unable to work.

Its release seems a long time ago. Jeremy Cotbyn was the Labour leader at the time and Theresa May was the Tory Prime Minister.

Barbarity

Corbyn told May in the House of Commons that she should watch the film, as he questioned her about the fairness of the welfare system. He named an ex-serviceman who had died without food after welfare sanctions, and said it was time to end the “institutional barbarity against, often, very vulnerable people.”

May defended work capability assessment with sanctions, and told Corbyn the Labour Party was “drifting away from the views of Labour voters”.

Today Corbyn’s successor as Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is adopting the same approach as Theresa May did in 2016 – leading the charge to cut benefits, with an announcement expected on Tuesday.

Starmer’s modus operandi may be subtly different – he suggests to the disabled that he’s doing them a favour by cutting their benefits and giving them the chance to work – but the outcome is the same. If they don’t sort themselves out, a fair proportion of them will be facing penury.

May’s answer to Corbyn was instructive. The implication was that the majority of Labour’s own voters saw disabled benefit claimants as scroungers who were cheating the system. In fact Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall fed into the “scroungers” narrative in January when she said some claiming sickness and disability benefits were “taking the mickey”.

By choosing to stress such a point, and in particular by failing to produce figures indicating the (limited) extent of fraud, she was in effect inviting people to exaggerate the level of abuse.

If, as May suggested, Labour voters had little sympathy with disabled or sick benefit claimants, it’s because of the relentless claimant-bashing that has gone on for many years in the pages of right-wing tabloids and more recently on social media. In that respect it’s similar to the bile spewed out over decades against the EU that made the Brexit vote possible.

Yet what is the truth about Britain’s disabled? Are they really able to live the life of Riley on the back of undeserved state handouts?

Myth

Comparisons with other advanced countries in fact demonstrate that the value of welfare payments generally in the UK are anything but generous.

The BBC economics correspondent Andy Verity has drawn on official statistics to explode the right-wing myth.

He writes: “Are we a ‘high welfare’ country where we pay people too much not to work, meaning the government could save billions by slashing welfare, no harm done? Erm – not exactly. Of 34 advanced economies, we’re third from the bottom.

“As highlighted by the think tank founded by John Maynard Keynes and others – the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) – the poorest regions of the UK are now worse off than the poorest in countries such as Malta or Slovenia.

“The amount we spend on welfare (benefits, state pensions etc) is not high compared to many other countries and shrank sharply as a share of the economy in the austerity decade 2010-2019 – in spite of an ageing population.

“While the amount spent on universal credit etc rose at the start of the pandemic, Rishi Sunak’s decision when it was over to withdraw the £20 a week booster hit six million of the UK’s poorest families hard. The payment hasn’t kept up with the price of essentials like food.

“As NIESR’s analysis shows, many benefit recipients will be left with a shortfall, forcing them to beg or borrow from friends or relatives to obtain the basics. This is one big reason for the rapid growth of food banks under austerity.

“The freezing of housing benefit combined with rapidly rising private rents means that it simply isn’t enough to house someone in the vast majority of homes.

“The New Economics Foundation – a progressive think tank – has published analysis suggesting that the government has been downplaying the effect of its proposals to cut the additional payments received by people unable to work due to disabilities or poor health.

“It says halving the gap would result in cutting an extra £3bn in payments to ill and disabled people – taking £146 a month from each person – and with planned cuts to personal independence payments, it could reduce support for ill and disabled people by between £7.5bn and £9bn.

“We know that since the pandemic, there’s been a huge rise in long-term illness, including mental illness. Another big factor is Long Covid. To many recipients, cuts on that scale could feel a lot like they’re being punished for the misfortune of getting sick.”

Election campaign

The imposition of the scale of cuts that are apparently being contemplated is not a good position from which to launch an election campaign. We’re a year away from the next Senedd election, but many local authorities in England will be staging elections in May.

A poll for Electoral Calculus is suggesting that Reform is on course to win control of eight councils including Doncaster – whose local MPs include Labour Cabinet Ministers Ed Miliband and John Healey – and County Durham, where I used to live and work.

Although Durham County Council was a Labour stronghold for many years, the party was sent into opposition at the last election in 2021, and the authority is currently run by a Liberal Democrat and Independent coalition.

The county has many similarities with the south Wales Valleys, and seems ripe for a Reform UK takeover.

County Durham, like our Valleys, is a classic “left behind” post-industrial area. There’s considerable irony in the fact that, as Labour adopts right-wing policies and is perceived to abandon the disadvantaged, whose interests the party was formed to represent, many who see themselves as abandoned are turning to an even more right-wing party which will secretly regard them with contempt.

The negative rhetoric of Reform and others like them can only be defeated by politicians who offer tangible improvements to people’s lives, political honesty and a credible but inspiring narrative.

The clock is ticking.


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Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 day ago

Pillow talk with a dollop of sadism, the scent of choice these days…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 day ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

The Meddling Classes on narcotics and champagne…The Fat Shanks Effect…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
16 hours ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

A u-turn is possible, help Clark to become a good person…keep the pressure up…
Who is married to who in this cruel government, tell us…

Last edited 16 hours ago by Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
15 hours ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

Mr and Mrs Bumble plus how many more husband and wife MPs and civil servants making policy in ‘slumber-land’…obscene!

Steve D.
Steve D.
1 day ago

How true the article is. The only way for those in charge to defeat Reform is to start improving the lives of ordinary people in places like Doncaster and the south Wales Valleys. Labour are in a bad place, the Tories dead in the water. Only Plaid Cymru can operate a successful challenge to Reform. Unlike the right wing party it’s based in Cymru and has a Welsh leader. It’s policies are for the people of Cymru it’s not a party focusing on a war on immigrants with dubious members. Reform is not the party of Cymru and never will… Read more »

Y Gogoniant
Y Gogoniant
7 hours ago
Reply to  Steve D.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why Plaid has never gained power? I have. It seems to come down to two issues(as far as I can see) The first being…. The Welsh language. As far as I can tell, Labour and Plaid policies are identical (for the most part) So why does one party succeed and the other doesn’t? I think it comes down to language. Very few of us speak it. Many of the people that don’t were born the other side of the dyke. They’re happy enough to live here, not so happy to have their leaders… Read more »

Undecided
Undecided
2 hours ago
Reply to  Y Gogoniant

Agreed. Plaid are not a serious party of government. They are forever calling for “investment” or “funding” without identifying where it is going to come from. What people want is things which actually make their lives at least a bit better, not vacuous promises or political posturing.

John
John
1 day ago

In my view, the treasury has come to the view that they can’t continue on the current trajectory, where costs are expected to increase by another 40 billion per year by the end of the parliament. To put in perspective, that’s similar to the uk military budget- on new welfare spending. They had enough trouble finding 6 billion extra to support Ukraine recently. Clearly they are trying to build a narrative around the cuts, probably based on the various focus groups they have, but fundamentally they’ve come to the conclusion they can’t allow it continue to spiral. what is disappointing… Read more »

Rob Pountney
Rob Pountney
11 hours ago
Reply to  John

Well, the treasury are quite obviously wrong then aren’t they… The treasury COULD come to the view that the rich should be taxed more… After all, almost every other comparable nation manages to better look after their own people, & quite a few that are ostensibly much worse off… Perhaps you’re not bothered by the effects of poverty, if not you should be, if not because you care about you fellow human beings, then because it is economically illiterate, treating malnutrition in hospital is much more expensive than providing enough money for PPL to actually live on, every penny you… Read more »

TheWoodForTheTrees
TheWoodForTheTrees
21 hours ago

Tax evasion and fraud costs the country way more than benefit fraud. Why is that not being tackled first? If the country is so hard up how come we can still afford to subsidise bars and restaurants for MPs and staff in Westminster? Who else in the country gets subsidised alcohol at work! I’m so disappointed with the Labour Government, their priorities are completely wrong. Blaming and worse, penalising disabled and vulnerable people for the country’s financial woes is a nonsense. It’s unsafe rhetoric which is indeed similar to the smoke and mirrors rhetoric which allowed Brexit to happen. It’s… Read more »

Adrian
Adrian
14 hours ago

Benefit fraud is tax evasion and fraud mate.

Adrian
Adrian
12 hours ago

There is the small matter of the economy not being able to afford the current eye-watering benefits bill.surely even Labour voters understand that there isn’t really a magic money tree.

Linda Jones
Linda Jones
9 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

Dear me. The Treasury could make more by introducing a wealth tax, land tax and transaction tax. The benefits are affordable but the red tories would rather continue to suck wealth up to the rich than help the poorest. Shame on Labour,

Y Gogoniant
Y Gogoniant
7 hours ago
Reply to  Linda Jones

This rhetoric really is stale. Hating the wealthy is not the same as loving the poor madam. Why do you(and others) insist on this tired guff? I want to help raise the poor up, not knock down the rich. People like you are to obsessed with one half of the equation and not attentive of the other!

Wynn
Wynn
1 hour ago
Reply to  Y Gogoniant

Why don’t you want to knock the rich down?

Llew Gruffudd
Llew Gruffudd
7 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

The economy, I don’t understand what you mean by it. The economy is a choice, of priority. There’s plenty of money in the economy. in the year 2022/23, the latest available figures, HMRC concedes it lost £38 billion in revenue from evasion, avoidance and mismanagement. That’s almost twice as much as the infamous black hole. Of that figure £5 billion was written off. That’s five times as much as the government took from pensioners fuel allowance A further £4 billion is lost because the tax authority and payer couldn’t agree the amounts. That’s roughly the same amount of savings from… Read more »

Wynn
Wynn
1 hour ago
Reply to  Adrian

Actually Adrian there is a magic money tree. They harvest it regularly. The problem is that they give most of the apples to the rich. Have you never wondered how the rich stay rich even during austerity? How Lord (insert name) has held onto his huge estate for four or five centuries? How the UK makes little from the North Sea while Norway made billions? Have you ever thought about how other countries poorer than ours given their population a better standard of living than ours? As to the cost of things, those eye watering costs, which countries do you… Read more »

Blerwm blerwm
Blerwm blerwm
12 hours ago

Labour’s entire strategy now is to be more anti-benefits-claimant, more anti-immigrant and, above all, more militarist than the far right. Why would you vote for Farage’s rabble when you can vote Labour, get the same policies, and still feel good about yourself, because you voted for a nominally progressive party? After all, Labour might have hateful policies but they don’t use hateful words, and that’s what really matters nowadays.

Simon Hobson
Simon Hobson
2 hours ago

Does not this crumbling of social security signal the need for change to taxation. And, the requirement for a universal basic income (UBI)? I believe so!

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