Starmer forces through his pointless, cruel, unfair, and politically stupid disability cuts

333 Labour MPs have voted through the creation of a new two-tier disability system that will economically sanction people who become disabled in the future.

Despite several late concessions and a rebellion of 47 Labour MPs, Starmer’s government have voted through a new two-tier disability system that will penalise people who become disabled in the future by halving the disability element of Universal Credit.

The economics

The £2 billion "saving" these changes are supposed to deliver is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to other elements of state finance. Increasing military spending from around 2% to 5% of GDP would cost something in the region of £85 billion per year, and the Bank of England is still paying out around £40 billion per year in interest on the bailout money it gave the private banks for free during the 2008 financial sector insolvency crisis!

Other policies could easily raise much more in tax too, such as equalising tax on passive income (Capital Gains Tax) and work (Income Tax); binning the National Insurance loophole that allows the mega-rich to pay lower NI rates than ordinary workers; a financial transaction tax; or a wealth tax on assets above £10 million.

Starmer’s mob wouldn’t do any of this instead of punching down on vulnerable people though, because they’re clearly much more interested in protecting the wealth of their mega-rich donors, than looking after ordinary people who become sick or disabled in the future.

Cuts to subsistence benefits are also a real false economy too, because poor people spend pretty much every penny of additional income straight back into the economy, meaning the £2 billion isn’t actually "saved" at all, rather just withdrawn from economic circulation.

The human cost

The main thing to consider when it comes to the human cost is the unfairness that Starmer’s government are building into the system, by loading their cuts onto people who become disabled in the future.

Many of the minority of people who still somehow support this cruelty (perhaps because they believe all the bullshit about workshy scroungers pretending to be disabled to claim lavish benefits) are going to find out the hard way how unfair it all is.

The rude awakening will happen when they become disabled through accident or illness; their parents develop age-related conditions; or other members of their family become sick or disabled, and then they find themselves or their family members subject to the even more paltry side of Starmer’s two-tier disability system.

The majority of able-bodied people are only ever one accident, or one unfortunate diagnosis away from finding themselves at the mercy of the UK’s cruel and draconian disability benefits system, and thanks to Starmer’s mob, it’s going to be even more ungenerous in the future.

Obviously the 333 Labour MPs who voted in favour of this penny-pinching cruelty won’t feel the pain if they become sick or disabled, because they’ll be protected from destitution by their lavish parliamentary pensions.

The politics

Starmer and Reeves decision to economically sanction disabled people, pensioners, and families rather than making corporations and the mega-rich pay a little bit more into the pot was already deeply stupid, given that this kind of "punching down" is unpopular with the general public, and even more unpopular amongst traditional Labour voters.

All of their backtracks and reversals on pensioner and disability sanctions haven’t just made them look like an incompetent shambles of a government that doesn’t know what it’s doing, it’s also left them still paying the political cost for having wanted to impose such cruelty in the first place.

They’ve also handed opposition parties an easy opportunity to pose as the good guys by voting against what remains of their disability cuts, and the unfair two-tier system they’re creating.

Obviously the opposition from parties like the Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and several independents was genuine, but given their track records of imposing draconian poverty-spreading cuts of their own in government, opposition from the likes of the Tories, Lib-Dems, and DUP seems entirely performative.

Conclusions

These disability cuts are pointless when considered from an economic perspective; cruel and unfair when considered from a humanitarian perspective; and downright stupid when considered from a party political perspective.