LABOUR prime minister Keir Starmer is prepared to defy the growing anger of workers by pushing through welfare cuts that will impoverish over 600,000 of the UK’s most severely disabled.
This week Labour are to reveal the extent to which their war on the sick and disabled will devastate their lives.
A backlash from Labour MPs, and the disgust of workers at a Labour government attacking the most vulnerable in society in order to ‘balance the books’ and pay for the massive spending on the military that Starmer is demanding to fund UK ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, has led to government ministers reportedly having to ditch earlier plans to freeze Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
This benefit helps disabled people with all the extra costs of living with their medical condition.
What prompted this retreat from the earlier plan to freeze PIP was the fact that it couldn’t just be done through a government announcement but would have required a vote in parliament.
While Labour could have relied on the support of Tory MPs, up to 80 Labour MPs were reported to be so disgusted or fearful of a backlash from their constituents that they were prepared to vote against, dealing a blow to Starmer’s claim of a unified party.
But under changes to be set out later on today by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall it is expected that instead, eligibility criteria for PIP will be tightened, making it harder to claim.
The Resolution Foundation thinktank has warned that by increasing the threshold for qualification for PIP support could mean around 620,000 people losing £675 a month on average.
According to the Foundation, 70% of these cuts would be concentrated on the poorest families.
Most of the £5billion to £6billion in cuts that Labour intend to make from slashing benefits will come from making it harder for the sick and disabled to qualify for PIP payments.
Driving the attack on benefits for the sick and disabled is the fact that the UK economy has collapsed even further into bankruptcy since Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget last autumn.
According to sources close to Reeves, ‘the world has changed’ since then.
It most certainly has changed, for the worse, with US president Donald Trump declaring trade war on America’s capitalist rivals in the UK and Europe – a tariff war that yesterday he announced would have no exceptions despite all Starmer’s attempts to plead for the UK to be excluded.
According to the government official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Reeves must desperately come up with £4.4 billion to cover an immediate deficit in government finances.
That money is to come out of a brutal austerity attack on the sick and disabled – far beyond that which even previous Tory governments attempted.
This prompted Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary, last week to make his first (and only) remarks criticising the Starmer government’s war on the sick and disabled, saying: ‘Pushing disabled people into hardship with cuts to support will only make the current challenges worse – and will not win public support.’
Warning Starmer that attacking PIP and throwing the most vulnerable sections into destitution will not ‘win public support’ is a cover for the complete inaction by the trade leadership over all Labour’s declared war on the entire welfare state and all the gains made in the past by the working class.
Nowak is essentially warning Starmer that the TUC cannot guarantee to hold back the hatred of workers and youth for a Labour government preparing to drive them into the gutter of poverty in an attempt to ensure the survival of a capitalist system that is collapsing into bankruptcy and recession.
With the working class and youth fast turning on the Starmer government, the time has come to sack leaders like Nowak and for workers to force the TUC to immediately call a general strike to kick out Starmer and bring in a workers’ government and a socialist planned economy.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British socialist revolution.
This is the way forward.