Keir Starmer wants to tell us about "lifestyle choices"

When politicians like Keir Starmer talk about "lifestyle choices" how come it's always to condemn the poor, rather than to highlight the greed and corruption of the rich?

In another one of his desperate efforts to ingratiate himself with the right-wing capitalist media hack pack, Keir Starmer has been punching down at social security recipients by saying that some people see claiming benefits as a "lifestyle choice".

It’s important to be realistic and admit that there is a small minority who feign illness, hide incomes and assets, and otherwise cheat the system to claim what they’re not entitled to. However it’s important to consider this issue in the proper context that they’re a vanishingly small minority compared to the millions who claim only what they’re entitled to.

By focusing on the minority who cheat and freeload, politicians like Starmer know exactly what they’re doing. They’re focusing attention on the worst people to provide cover for draconian restrictions and austerity cutbacks that will harm loads of ordinary people, including the millions of working people who receive Universal Credit to top up their poverty pay.

There will always be freeloaders in any system, but it’s deceptive to portray them as the norm, and measures to go after them are often deeply counter-productive because they cost more to administer than they save, and because they end up harming ordinary people who fall foul of Kafkaesque eligibility rules.

Since we’re on the subject of freeloading, isn’t it interesting that Starmer focuses attention on the freeloading of the poor, but not on the freeloading of the rich.

Poverty pay

If an individual or company pays their employees so little that they end up relying on benefits like Universal Credit and/or Housing Benefit to make up the shortfall between their salary and the real cost of living, it’s the employers that are benefiting from the handouts.

Isn’t it a "lifestyle choice" to boost your profits by paying your workers too little to survive on, then expecting the rest of us to pick up the tab?

This kind of poverty-pay leeching is so widespread that over 2.3 million working adults relied on Universal Credit to top up their poverty pay in 2023 [source]

Where is the condemnation? Why is there no legislation to ban exploitative poverty-pay employers from receiving other government funding, or tendering for government outsourcing contracts?

Property-hoarders

Isn’t it a "lifestyle choice" to take out loans to buy up affordable property in order to rent it out to people who have been priced out by the plague of property hoarders that has infested our housing market?

Extracting the cost of the mortgage repayments plus a nice slice of profit for yourself is an undeniable example of expecting other people to fund your lifestyle.

It’s a "lifestyle choice" to idly collect rent from others who are trapped in Britain’s private rental nightmare instead of building a business that actually creates something, or provides tangible services.

And it’s a particularly damaging one given that widespread landlordism harms those the practice has priced out of ownership, and because it adds nothing to the overall wealth of of the country.

Don’t expect to hear Keir Starmer fulminating about this selfish, damaging, and economically unproductive form of "lifestyle choice" though, because he’s just stuffed the Labour Party benches with more greedy landlords than ever before.

Tax-dodgers

It’s beyond dispute that the UK loses vastly more to the actions of wealthy tax-avoiders and tax-evaders than it does to the tiny minority of benefits cheats.

Isn’t it a "lifestyle choice" to pay tax lawyers to advise you how to set up a load of offshore trusts and shell companies in order to dodge paying tax on the profits you make in the UK?

Isn’t it a double-whammy of selfish lifestyle choices when the poverty-pay employers and greedy landlords hide the wealth they’ve extracted by exploiting ordinary British families overseas?

Why is Starmer insistent on highlighting the mole hill of benefits freeloaders, when the mountain of tax-dodging is so evident?

Starmer’s handouts

Then there’s Starmer himself. He’s accepted more dodgy donations and freebies than all previous Labour Party leaders since Tony Blair combined.

He even lets his dodgy donors direct Labour Party policy.

Isn’t it a "lifestyle choice" to hold his hand out for a load of expensive clothes for himself and his wife, football tickets, concert tickets, even his glasses?

Why does Starmer find this kind of freeloading so agreeable, while he rails against the minority of people at the bottom of society who also play the system for whatever they can get out of it?

Smokescreen

The reason politicians like Starmer always seem to talk about the social security system by referencing the tiny minority of freeloading cheats is that it provides cover for draconian welfare reforms and cutbacks that harm those who are actually entitled to help.

Turning the benefits system into a Kafkaesque nightmare of eligibility tests and sanctions ends up punishing those who are least capable of playing the game. The vulnerable, the mentally ill, the under-educated.

Meanwhile the hardened benefits freeloaders know exactly how to play the system for what they can get.

It’s been shown time and again that draconian enforcement also costs more to administer than it saves by turfing people off benefits (generally not the benefits freeloaders who know how to play the system).

It’s not just a smokescreen for more vandalism of the social security system either, it’s a means of directing public anger away from much larger freeloader issues like landlordism, poverty-pay, tax-dodging, and politicians on the take.