I remember when it was the Tories doing this. Back then, in the early 2010s, you half-expected it. George Osborne in a high-vis vest, talking about “hard choices,” as if cutting the lifeline for disabled people was just another routine budget decision, like deciding which department got a new coffee machine. The reports came later: the UN condemning the UK for “grave” violations of disabled people’s rights, the death toll creeping upwards, the stories of people sanctioned for missing Jobcentre appointments while they were in hospital. The official term was “austerity,” but for those at the sharp end, it was something else entirely.
And now it’s Labour. Starmer’s Labour. The party that was supposed to be different, that was meant to signal some kind of return to sanity after the reactionary wreckage of the last fifteen years. The government wants to cut £5 billion from disability benefits, arguing that too many people are “economically inactive.” “We can’t afford this,” they say, as if disability support were some luxury expense, like a weekend in Paris or a second home in the Cotswolds. As if poverty were a lifestyle choice.
These aren’t even Conservative cuts—these are Reform UK cuts, a policy that could have been written by Nigel Farage himself. The very people Farage and his base despise, disabled people, the long-term sick, those struggling with mental health, are now in Labour’s crosshairs. This is not just fiscal conservatism; it is a deliberate play for the votes of those who believe Britain has become too soft, too “woke,” too generous to those in need. Labour, in its desperate bid to prove it is “tough on welfare,” is adopting the rhetoric and policies of the hard right.
“These aren’t even Conservative cuts—these are Reform UK cuts, a policy that could have been written by Nigel Farage himself.”
We have been here before, and we know what happens next. The same think-tank studies and TV debates, the same manufactured outrage from the papers that cheered on every welfare cut a decade ago. But back then, at least, the enemy was obvious. The Conservatives had spent decades dismantling the welfare state. You expected cruelty from them. That was their whole thing. But when it’s Labour making the cuts, there’s an added layer of betrayal. Not because anyone still believes the party represents the working class in any meaningful sense, those illusions faded a long time ago, but because there is a particular cynicism in their attempt to sell these reforms as “tough but fair.” It’s not just brutal, it’s dishonest.
Why is Labour doing this now? The party leadership knows full well that these cuts won’t reduce poverty or improve the economy. The real reason is political: appeasing the right-wing press, reassuring big business, signalling to wavering Tory voters that Labour is no longer the party of welfare “dependency.” Starmerism, if it can be called that, is not a coherent political ideology but an exercise in triangulation, sacrificing principles to win power, then claiming the absence of principles is itself a principle.
“Labour, in its desperate bid to prove it is ‘tough on welfare,’ is adopting the rhetoric and policies of the hard right.”
The economic logic doesn’t hold up either. Cutting benefits does not, in fact, save money in the long run. The last wave of austerity left Britain poorer, sicker, and more unequal. NHS waiting lists soared. The social security system became so punitive that people simply dropped out of it altogether, leading to more homelessness, more mental health crises, and ultimately higher costs elsewhere. Study after study has shown that investing in social security boosts economic participation, people can work when they aren’t spending all their time desperately trying to survive. Yet Labour ignores this, clinging to the same discredited dogma that destroyed lives a decade ago.
Then there’s the “moral case.” Labour insists these cuts are not about cruelty but fairness, a way to “help people back into work.” The language is eerily familiar. This is the same rhetoric the Tories used under Iain Duncan Smith: benefits are a “trap,” work is a “route out of poverty,” cuts are for the claimants’ own good. But who is actually writing this policy? Which think tanks, which corporate donors, which civil servants steeped in decades of neoliberal orthodoxy are deciding that disabled people are “economically inactive” rather than human beings with rights?
Who really benefits from these cuts? Not the economy, which will see yet another increase in poverty-driven demand for services. Not working people, who are only ever one illness or redundancy away from needing that same social security system. But the ultra-rich, the ones Labour refuses to tax, the ones who could fund the welfare state a hundred times over if only their vast fortunes were properly taxed. It’s not that there isn’t money in Britain. It’s that Labour has chosen, deliberately, to extract it from the poorest rather than the richest.
“It’s not that there isn’t money in Britain. It’s that Labour has chosen, deliberately, to extract it from the poorest rather than the richest.”
There are alternatives. Labour could raise taxes on wealth and corporate profits. It could properly fund public services so that disabled people and the long-term sick receive the support they need rather than being pushed into destitution. It could invest in infrastructure and industries that provide secure, well-paid jobs. But that would require breaking with the neoliberal consensus, something Starmer and his front bench seem entirely unwilling to do.
The cuts will go through. The deaths will rise. The DWP will deny responsibility. Labour MPs will grumble about “tough decisions.” And in five years, the government will be left with the same stagnant economy, the same broken social security system, and the same desperate population.
We have been here before. And we will be here again.
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