Keir Starmer's two-tier disability system is unacceptable

Keir Starmer has backtracked on his proposed disability cuts, but only to the position of creating a two-tier disability system in which people who become disabled in the future face lose out.

The professional media hacks are reporting Keir Starmer’s backtrack on his party’s proposed disability cuts as another U-turn, but it’s not actually a change of direction, it’s just a strategic retreat to a new position of imposing destitution and harsh new restrictions on people who become sick or disabled in the future.

The only element of hope is that Starmer and his goons can be pushed into retreat, and that there are at least some Labour MPs who are unwilling to accept cruel economic sanctions on disabled people while the government continues lavishing tax breaks and handouts on the mega-rich.

Starmer and the appalling people he’s surrounded himself with have retreated from their original position of driving both currently disabled people and people who will become disabled in the future into destitution, to just targeting their cruel economic sanctions at those who are not yet disabled.

Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Liz Kendall are now intent on creating a two-tier disability benefits system under which people who are currently disabled and in receipt of PIP and the disability element of Universal Credit get will get to keep their subsistence benefits, while those who become disabled in the future will have to jump though much higher hoops to qualify for significantly lower levels of support.

It’s vital to remember what kind of people Starmer’s reforms are targeted at.

Of the working age people who would currently receive PIP, the most likely to lose their disability benefits under these proposed reforms will be people suffering severe back pain (79%), arthritis (77%), other musculoskeletal diseases (71%), chronic pain (68%), and cardiovascular disease (62%).

The vast majority of people who are set to lose out are not going to be the ‘workshy malingerers’ that the Labour front bench keep pretending they’re going after, because around 40% of people who receive PIP under the current system are in work, around 40% are retired, and a huge proportion of the remaining 20% are genuinely disabled people with conditions so severe that nobody with an ounce of compassion or common sense would want to put in a position of 'find work or starve'.

The people Starmer’s goons are intent on economically sanctioning are mainly older people, many of whom will have had jobs for their entire adult lives, who will develop age related conditions some time after this dreadful legislation passes.

It’s also worth remembering that Starmer’s justification for this assault on disabled people is built on a pack of lies.

Creating a two-tier disability benefits system to punish those who become disabled in the future has absolutely nothing to do with "getting people into work" because PIP is not a work-related benefit, and because withdrawing disability support to pay for stuff like specialised equipment, care services, and mobility vehicles will actually make it harder for the disabled people of the future who want to keep working, to stay in employment.

It’s also got nothing to do with "eliminating fraud", because the government has outright failed to demonstrate any statistically significant level of fraud from PIP claimants whatever.

The idea that "we can’t afford it" is also an absolute load of rubbish, especially in light of the fact that the value of the tax breaks that are mainly lavished on the already extremely wealthy absolutely dwarfs the cost of the entire disability benefits system!

Add together tax breaks on pension savings that mainly benefit the wealthiest 20%, the regressive National Insurance tax break that allows people on six figure salaries to pay lower rates than the rest of us; and the lower rate of Capital Gains Tax (tax on idle profits on assets) than Income Tax (tax on actual work), and that all adds up to way more than the country spends on all disability support put together!

There’s absolutely no need to economically sanction disabled people of the future in order to save something like £3.5 billion a year, when vastly more than that could be raised with relatively minor alterations to the tax system, to reduce some of the tax-breaks and handouts for people who can easily afford to pay a little bit more.

Then there’s the fact the government is outright refusing to conduct economic impact assessments on their proposed changes before they make them, presumably because they know perfectly well that their disability sanctions will drive working disabled people out of employment; force mainly older people with age-related conditions into destitution; and mainly impact communities with high pensioner populations, and low-income/working class areas with poorer levels of public health.

Imposing economic sanctions on disabled people of the future is an act of conscious cruelty with no real justification. It’s just diabolical Labour right-wingers like Starmer, Reeves, and Kendall trying to show off to the right-wing press that they can be every bit as cruel and merciless towards the most vulnerable in society as the Tories were before them.

There was no justification for the cruelty Starmer’s mob were proposing before, and there’s still no justification for creating a two-tier disability benefits system to humiliate, sanction, and impoverish people who become disabled in the future.

There’s also absolutely no justification for trying to rush these mendacious changes through parliament so quickly, so as to avoid parliamentary scrutiny, and without conducting an impact assessment either.

There’s little public support for what they’re doing, and of those who actually believe the propaganda and lies Starmer’s minions are using to justify this conscious cruelty, many are likely to find out for themselves one day, when their elderly parents, their partner, or they themselves are condemned to destitution for the "crime" of developing age-related conditions like arthritis, bad backs, chronic pain, or heart disease.

If Starmer succeeds in bullying Labour MPs into creating this two-tier disability system, it’ll be yet another millstone he’s hanging around the neck of Labour’s electoral prospects in the future.