As The Guardian notes this morning:
Ministers are scrambling to avoid a damaging rebellion this summer when MPs vote on controversial cuts to disability benefit payments, even offering potential rebels the chance to miss the vote altogether.
The government is due to hold a vote in June and dozens of Labour MPs are worried it will hurt their constituents and could cost them their seats.
Possible solutions include allowing backbenchers to abstain – a major climbdown from earlier votes, when rebels were disciplined or suspended from the party.
Note a number of things.
First, the concern is not about the policy.
Nor is it about the signal these rebellious MPs are sending that suggests there might be something horribly wrong with penalising the least well off in our society so that Rachel Reeves might have a chance of making her self-imposed fiscal rule work.
Neither is the concern for those who might suffer.
Rather it is about imposing party discipline, and maintaining an appearance of unity when imposing callous policy with decided aforethought.
The appearance of the Labour Party is all that matters.
Of course, this could be poor or even biased journalism. But the Guardian still, rather bizarrely, appears to sympathise with Labour, so that seems unlikely.
In that case we have to assume that millions of people, families and children who will suffer as a consequence of Labour minister's contempt for them are just, in the opinion of Morgan McSweeney, Labour's chief of staff and power behind Starmer, collateral damage of little concern in the games that he plays, all with the apparent intention of fuelling inequality in the UK.
How can anyone be so indifferent?
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They really are a callous, uncaring and corrupt government totally unfit for office. On a related issue, I cannot see why the carers allowance debacle could not be solved by giving carers the allowance (its very poor to say the least), and allowing them to earn but just make it all taxable? Far better than the current situation where if someone goes above the threshold the carer loses all of the allowance. Antiquated, unfair and bizarre!
Agreed
@ Robert
I’ve been on Carers Allowence (CA) since 2011 looking after my mum with dementia (she died late 2015) and my currently 90 year old dad, and CA has ALWAYS classed as taxable income since it’s inception.
One of the qualifications for CA is that you have to do a minimum of 35 hrs per week caring. The logic behind allowing only part-time work when claiming CA is that you can’t successfully care and work full time at the same time. I agree with this as I struggled initally both caring for my parents and working only 16 hrs a week. I could never quite work out if my paid job was interferring with my caring or vice versa! A bit of both, probably.
My mum’s stroke put paid to my paid work as she needed 24hr care after that, so I had to gave up my P/T job.
CA is the only benefit I’m aware of that if you go over the job allowence (since April £196 pw or 16hrs on NMW) by 1p you lose the lot for that week. Keep that up for a year and you’ll end up having to pay back £4,331.60p tp the DWP… all for the sake of a penny!
By all means keep the 16 hr max per week for paid work with a £196 pw max earnings limit, but why not simply withdraw £1 for £1 if you go over that limit in any given week?
Perhaps that’s too complicated – if more fair – for the DWP’s antiquated computer systems and lack of manpower to cope with?
Thanks for sharing.
@ Sandra Harvey
You have done & continue to do a vital job as an unpaid carer.
There is NO logic to the CA cliff edge.
The DWP and HMRC are perfectly capable of working out an equitable solution between themselves, using reporting, information sharing, HMRC self- assessment, and a tax code. Overpayment of CA in one year could be collected via the tax code in the following year from any taxable PAYE receipt such as private pension or other earnings. If someone isn’t paying tax, then they can be exempted from payback. Let’s face it, we never miss an opportunity to give the wealthy tax exemptions.
But even the most heartless & callous “economist” at DHSC & DWP must realise that impoverishing carers and those they care for, is very bad economics, and far more expensive for the state than keeping them (you) above the poverty line.
It’s not as if I’m expecting them to be humane or caring or compassionate or anything like that. My expectation threshold is way lower than that and has been for a long time.
Hi,
Would a simpler system be to ‘pay’ a national wage to everyone.
Seem to be positive outcomes for trials.
With a top earner tax on income bias to pay for it.
A way of putting money into the economy and easy to adjust.
Those with additional needs and challenges, medical, deprived locality, can claim a top up from the UKs ‘Wealth Fund’. Ah we spaffed our oil bonus up the wall.
Cheers. Andrew.
No, as I have explained a number of times. Search my views on universal basic incomes.
“The appearance of the Labour Party is all that matters.”…………to whom exactly?
I don’t disagree with the statement – we know who loses from the “policy” (poor people), but who gains?
Reeves from accounts’ fiscal rule? eh? So who? What’s the point? What’s the political calculation?
The war on the poor – LINO will show em’ ha we will teach em to be poor etc. Eh? Why?
I await with interest the results of the local elections.
There is no point, bar the gratification of an obscure ego or two
“The appearance of the Labour Party….”
I hear Starmer/Reeves/Streeting are helping market a new moisturiser, with a year’s supply, free, to all LINO MPs.
“L’INO – reduces the appearance of caring.
Because you’re not worth it.”
This is encouraging. Sooner rather than later would seem like an appropriate time for a rebellion on the Labour back benches. If they do not re-program or replace their leaders soon it will be too late to allow the UK under Labour to have a positive influence on what is happening in the world today. Time as also running out for the introduction of an economic policy that will have any chance of showing signs of success before their term in office is up. Labour’s current trajectory will almost certainly hand control of this country to the far Right.
I believe this weekend would be a good time for any constituents of Labour MPs to be composing a letter advising their MP of the threats and opportunities that they currently face. They also need to be informed about the causes and effects of inequality in our society and how the tax changes and other ideas you have could bring about the changes we need to see.
What I find encouraging here, is that, maybe, just maybe, >400 “Labour” MPs have noticed that numerically, politically, demographically, psephologically, and constitutionally, they are, collectively, the most powerful people in the country, and that Starmer HAS to listen to them or he isn’t PM any more because if they defeat him, he loses his majority, and if he expels them, he still loses his majority.
Is it possible for 400 MPs to “grow a pair” (+ whatever the female equivalent of that phrase is?).
Yes, do write to them.
theyworkforyou.com
writetothem.com
Have a good Easter.
The good people win in the end.
Large numbers of them are terrified of losing their cosy places on the benches. This is particularly the case in Scotland, where few of them have large majorities and current polling suggests that Ian Murray will struggle to fill a taxi next time around.
Off topic, Richard, but I thought you’d really want to watch this segment from Chris Hayes as it’s all about ultra processed foods and how the key researcher into this topic in the US has/is being censored because his research and findings run counter to RFK. It’s the second segment from the top (‘Top NIH scientist speaks out …’). He also talks about food addiction, which bears out much you’ve argued. https://www.msnbc.com/all
Thanks Ivan
I will watch later
Party before people including the Guardian.
Any value in a well – worded petition? 10,000 signatures you get a response. At 100,000 they are obliged to consider a debate in the house. Give > 400? Labour MPs a free vote on something worth talking about? These sort of figures should be easily achievable given the level of interest in social media channels decrying inequality.
Can anyone recall the last time a Labour leader was seen in the inner city, amongst the poor?
I’ve seen Labour(ed) aping the Tories by dressing up in PPE and seen in factories and building sites amongst ‘working’ people.
It is very noticeable. I always think back to Robert Kennedy visiting the poor of his country in the Deep south and the Appalachian mountains – fact finding all recorded in B&W.
Our politics is mentally ill. It needs to be treated.
They are hooked on hi-viz
But they never go where boots on the ground are doing real engineering and actually building real infrastructure.
Might these “contemptuous games” be an example of a leadership, which has imposed the delusional rigidity of ideological certainty”, trying to cope with practical realities externalised/ignored by its dogma?
“Both Soviet and neoliberal doctrines are based on closed system reasoning. They are based on purely logical arguments from utopian assumptions – axiomatic deduction – rather than on arguments from observation and reasoned analysis.” [From Abby Innes who wrote the relevant book “Soviet Britain: how British politics is mirroring the failings of Soviet socialism]
If this Government truly goes ahead with slashing disability benefits, let’s be absolutely clear: it’s not about fiscal responsibility — it’s about political cruelty, plain and simple. There is zero economic rationale for this. None. These cuts have nothing to do with balancing the books and everything to do with ideology.
This is the same Government that, in its own manifesto, solemnly promised to:
“Build an NHS fit for the future that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.”
And yet — somehow — they’ve missed one of the most basic, well-established facts in public health: poverty makes people sicker, faster. The poorer you are, the quicker you age biologically, the sooner you fall ill, and the more you cost the NHS.
So what exactly is the plan here? Cut a few quid in benefits today, only to pile on vastly greater costs in emergency care, hospital stays, and long-term illness tomorrow? It’s not just heartless — it’s economically illiterate.
Cutting support for the disabled and vulnerable isn’t fiscal prudence. It’s a short-sighted, self-defeating act of political vandalism — and no serious Government with a shred of integrity or intelligence would even consider it.
The “plan” is v simple.
It is the “Morgan McSweeney” plan (the man who ran Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign in 2015, Labour’s very own Dominic Cummings)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-kendall-says-she-lost-the-labour-leadership-election-because-she-was-the-eat-your-greens-candidate-a6835011.html )
Starmer’s government is part of a 9 yr election campaign to win in 2029. I know, we thought we were voting last year for a chance to make the UK a better place to live in for everyone after 14 years of Tory austerity and incompetence but that was NOT the Starmer/McSweeney plan.
McSweeney’s 2029 campaign will be as successful as Liz Kendall’s leadership candidacy was (it doesnt seem to have occurred to her that supporting Tory welfare cuts wasn’t the way to win Labour members’ hearts and minds – not as smart as Starmer who negotiated the journey from a Labour to a national electorate by lying to the first demograhic then doing 10 policy U-turns to appease the second, and winning because of a total Tory collapse even though he had the charisma of a stale white cabbage).
This electioneering takes absolute precedence over the task of running the country. This is what ordinary people (those who don’t work in Downing Street) just don’t get. Which is why we don’t work in Downing St.)
All issues, situations, crises and policy initiatives are important ONLY insofar as they offer theoretical opportunities to attract Reform voters to support Labour. All Labour representatives have been issued with crib sheets, (working families, growth, Great British Anything, growth, fiscal responsibility, growth, difficult decisions, growth, cast iron fiscal rules, growth, special relationship, growth, antisemitism, growth, and a dog whistle that only Reform Red Wall voters can hear.)
The short or long term effect of LINO policies on the UK and our citizenry is unimportant.
What matters (to Downing St.) is the psephology. Will it keep Starmer/Reeves in power, or do their donors have to train up/bribe/threaten/buy up a new PM and cabinet?
That, I am afraid, is the McSweeney plan. It isn’t going well. But we all know that already (unless we work in Downing St. or Labour HQ).
Labour MPs can stop this stupid plan any time they want to, by telling Starmer to dump McSweeney, have yet another 180 degree policy U-turn, or just resign. Or they can leave McSweeney in place until Nigel Fa***e wins in 2029.
Simples!
Thanks
Appreciated
What I’d really like to know is – who is now the Labour target voter. It looks like now it is only the Reform voter in the ‘Red Wall’. But that’s fewer than 20 per cent of electorate, most of whom would never vote Labour anyway. They’ve really stretched Mendelson’s ‘they’ll vote for us no matter what as they have nowhere else to go’ far too far now. Surveys on voting intentions among the disabled and carers should be a sobering reading for Labour. Support for Labour among these voters used to be 70+, now it’s in lower teens. There isn’t a group of traditional Labour voters they haven’t spat in the face.
Good question
They’re taking the proverbial out of anyone to the left of David Cameron, who was more left wing than Starmer. I will not vote for them.
For anyone here who doesn’t know me yet, I’m bed ridden with ME/CFS. I can just about stagger as far as the bathroom and back, leaning on window sill, furniture, the wall, and grabbing at door frames. I’ve been ill since 1992, gradually getting worse.
Must be near 3 years ago now that husband brought Covid back to me, caught while he was attending a pre-hernia-op appt at a place that I prob shouldn’t name, somewhere that does stuff privately for NHS. I went from needing to rest a lot, but could still get out a very small amount, to being stuck in bed most of the time. I haven’t been in our back garden for over 3 years now. Apart from dental and med appts I don’t leave the house. I manage to get down the stairs about once every couple of weeks, or less, to sit in our front porch to look at front garden.
Once a year I make the trip to our caravan in Bwlchtocyn (North Wales), it takes me around a week to recover from the approx 3 hour drive. We stay as long as poss, last year I had 3 “outings” from caravan – one to a glorious garden relatively near by, where husband pushed me around in my multi-purpose wheelchair, a Hippocampe (https://www.hippocampe.co.uk/). The other 2 were dental emergencies (rolls eyes)! We came home mid November. I realise I’m in a lucky position, but I worry about all those who aren’t.
I am so F-ING ANGRY with our mean-spirited and cruel government. How dare they cut benefits for disabled people. Ever get the feeling they’d be happy if all the poor and disabled folk just died because they couldn’t afford to eat? Just think how much money Reeves and Streeting could save! Fewer NHS appts for disabled too, so those could go to more “deserving” people. Grrr!
Since I first had to give up work, I’ve always looked for something worthwhile to spend my time on. I was a very early adopter of the Internet – one of my memories is watching the Twin Towers falling on a teeny tiny little box on my laptop while at the caravan alone. I could still cook enough back then to cope for a few days alone.
While I’m still shielding since I had Covid (I suspect it would kill me if I caught it again), I still feel my life is rich. I have lots of friends on the internet. Am saddened I only see my grandkids once a year, at the caravan, where we meet up outside on the deck. But hey ho, that’s life.
I have a wonderful view from my bedroom window here in Liverpool, I’ve been watching the trees greening up over the last few weeks, and I can see the Mersey too – the ships passing by. I recommend https://shipais.uk/index.html to anyone who lives near any kind of shipping route. I watch the birds flying over, it’s a real thrill when a blue-tit or goldfinch lands on the telephone wires in front of my window! 🙂
This Valentine’s Day my husband wrote a poem for me. I hope you don’t mind if I share it with you here, I have his permission to share. It made me cry when I first read it, and it still does.
We used to wander
You and me
Down the streets
In company
Stop off at
A gallery
Have a cup of Coffee
We used to wander
You and me
Across the morfa*
Wander free
Scrutinising
Bird and bee
Smell the gorse
And hear the sea.
But that was then
And this is now
We search locations
Wonder how
Ponder how
To make a trip
This is now
Take a sip
We could still wander
You and me
Wind abeam and
Sailing free
Round the islands
Cross the sea
Seal and dolphin
Company
Yma o hyd!**
*Marsh. For me it’s the area between the road and the cliffs at Hell’s Mouth (Porth Neigwl)
**Welsh for Still Here.
Anyway, after all my doom and gloom, here’s some music to cheer you up! 😉
Don’t Let Us Get Sick by Warren Zevon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELe4vC3oM5E
Sorry this is so long! Best wishes to you all from rather grey and misty Liverpool.
Thanks for sharing Maggie
Go well
Thank you for introducing yourself Maggie!
You are so right about the value of the internet when your mobility is curtailed. I have many housebound or nearly-housebound online friends who keep involved in and connected with society with their fingers.
(I was brought up in Crosby so was carried back there by your picture of the ships on the Mersey. We got the Liverpool Post and my father always read out the ships that were due in to the docks that day).
And thank you for sharing such an evocative ( and relevant to me and my husband) poem.
Thanks for sharing that Maggie. I spent a whole summer holiday (age 9-10) in the British “Protectorate”port of Aden, S Yemen in 1963 – RAF Stramer Point, the coaling station for the empire’s shipping doing Red Sea/Suez Canal/Med route and I still have my Observer’s Book of Ships from then. I knew the funnel colours/patterns of all the shipping lines – Cunard, P&O, Castle Line etc. and all the military ships from their shapes. My dad grew up in Bootle and I have happy memories of the City, including ferry trips to the Isle of Man.
Makes the current news from Yemen hard to ignore, an amazing and very ancient civilisation, much abused over the years.
Replying to pilgrim slight return:
Can anyone recall the last time a Labour leader was seen in the inner city, amongst the poor?
er… Jeremy Corbyn
Ive had this from ‘Team Labour
Labour Party members are invited to join an exclusive briefing and Q&A with Labour’s Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, next Wednesday 23 April at 6pm.
No doubt it will be mainly ‘briefing’ and very little Q and A
I will try getting a question through – maybe will mine something from this recent Roy Lilley posting – or maybe something else.
“”””””””””””””””
When the prime minister and chancellor say the world has changed, mostly for the worse…
… there’s a certain type of person who takes that as permission to do the big and ugly things voters would never vote for a Labour government to do.
It’s happening to the NHS, right now.
Who and how was it decided that NHSE would go, budgets would be cut by 50% and the upshot… thousands of people sacked?
Where is the strategic analysis. The Board decision. The Bill. The risk assessment? The analysis. The impact statement. The plan? The license from the voters to demolish parts of their NHS?
Capricious decisions, erratic, volatile and like a ticking time-bomb smuggled deep into the foundations of the service.
As Isabel Hardman comments in the iNewspaper; Wes Streeting has a chainsaw but no vision for the NHS. She is right about the vision and the chainsaw but not the person wielding it.
Tell me decisions weren’t arrived at on the hoof over a weekend, by Alan Milburn egging on Silly Boy and announced the following Monday.
The cunning plan; slash the budgets, stand back and let the service fight itself for survival; forcing a reduction in headcount, without wasting time on analysis or permission.
You’ll have to go some to tell me that the poor-man’s Elon Musk, Alan Milburn doesn’t own the chainsaw.
Some of the impact;
Reduce corporate function costs by half. Between 41,100 and 150,700 people across 215 trusts, dumped.
Halving NHSE’s workforce, slashing 6,500 jobs.
Redundancy costs around £1 billion.
Northern Care Alliance to cut approximately 14% of its corporate workforce .
Mid and South Essex Trust, cut 150 non-frontline, clinical posts.
East Suffolk and North Essex FT, approximately 350 jobs to go to the private sector.
Royal Derby Hospital, introduced Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS) offers severance pay to non-clinical staff.
Glenlyn Medical Centre (Surrey), salaried GPs were invited to apply for voluntary redundancy. Three doctors set to leave as a result.
Nottingham University Trust, where ‘staff can’t sleep with worry’, outsource parts of its finance department approximately 80 administrative staff at risk of redundancy. Plus, a MARS option.
Southampton University Hospitals Trust, plans to make 100 job cuts; administrative, clerical, and management roles. – “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Roy Lilley’s emails are well worth signing up for.
A much smaller story, but Labour are also making a 40% reduction to the Adoption Support Fund which has been stuck at £5000pa for at least 6yrs. This is a fund that adoptive parents can apply to in order to get help to fund therapy for their adopted children. Remember these kids are heavily traumatised. Most of us adoptive parents are not child psychologists and are not able to personally provide the therapy our children need. Without this help family life will be unbelievably difficult. It seems that Labour are of the view that we need 40% less assistance.
Contemptuous and contemptible in equal parts.
Both contemptuous and contemptible.
This is so not what those who voted Labour voted for or expected.
This is so far from Niel Kinnock’s famous 1987 speech – it is, in fact, the very essence of what Kinnock warned against.
And it is the greatest irony that as Labour leader, Neil Kinnock set the pattern for most of his successors, starting with the Miners Strike, and bringing the likes of Peter Mandelson to the fore.
His nadir was probably that speech he gave to Labour MPs and peers, when he warned that a Corbyn leadership was a threat to parliamentary democracy, and which was reported to cause Lucy Powell to leave the meeting in tears.
And she’s a typical example of the politically useless as well.
Finally, I watched my mum’s local MP, Josh Simons, on News night the other evening and I had the following terrible though:
Liz Truss’s time as PM was so brief as to be exceeded by a lettuce.
Labour’s current contrasting problem is that so many backbenchers come across as nothing other than wet lettuces!
Ive had this from ‘Team Labour
Labour Party members are invited to join an exclusive briefing and Q&A with Labour’s Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, next Wednesday 23 April at 6pm.
No doubt it will be mainly ‘briefing’ and very little Q and A
I will try getting a question through – maybe will mine something from this recent Roy Lilley posting – or maybe something else.
“”””””””””””””””
When the prime minister and chancellor say the world has changed, mostly for the worse…
… there’s a certain type of person who takes that as permission to do the big and ugly things voters would never vote for a Labour government to do.
It’s happening to the NHS, right now.
Who and how was it decided that NHSE would go, budgets would be cut by 50% and the upshot… thousands of people sacked?
Where is the strategic analysis. The Board decision. The Bill. The risk assessment? The analysis. The impact statement. The plan? The license from the voters to demolish parts of their NHS?
Capricious decisions, erratic, volatile and like a ticking time-bomb smuggled deep into the foundations of the service.
As Isabel Hardman comments in the iNewspaper; Wes Streeting has a chainsaw but no vision for the NHS. She is right about the vision and the chainsaw but not the person wielding it.
Tell me decisions weren’t arrived at on the hoof over a weekend, by Alan Milburn egging on Silly Boy and announced the following Monday.
The cunning plan; slash the budgets, stand back and let the service fight itself for survival; forcing a reduction in headcount, without wasting time on analysis or permission.
You’ll have to go some to tell me that the poor-man’s Elon Musk, Alan Milburn doesn’t own the chainsaw.
Some of the impact;
Reduce corporate function costs by half. Between 41,100 and 150,700 people across 215 trusts, dumped.
Halving NHSE’s workforce, slashing 6,500 jobs.
Redundancy costs around £1 billion.
Northern Care Alliance to cut approximately 14% of its corporate workforce .
Mid and South Essex Trust, cut 150 non-frontline, clinical posts.
East Suffolk and North Essex FT, approximately 350 jobs to go to the private sector.
Royal Derby Hospital, introduced Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS) offers severance pay to non-clinical staff.
Glenlyn Medical Centre (Surrey), salaried GPs were invited to apply for voluntary redundancy. Three doctors set to leave as a result.
Nottingham University Trust, where ‘staff can’t sleep with worry’, outsource parts of its finance department approximately 80 administrative staff at risk of redundancy. Plus, a MARS option.
Southampton University Hospitals Trust, plans to make 100 job cuts; administrative, clerical, and management roles. – “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””
GPS being made redundant is absurd…
UK is changing socially and politically that means the old certainties of old Labour and old Tory have gone & most of us older folk are being caught out by the ramifications.
5 elections since 2010 all really odd when compared to the old 2 party system.
2 of the elections produced hung parliaments. One led to a coalition the other a sordid vote supply arrangements which included £1bn bung. The 2 other elections have produced large majorities but the Johnson govt’s focus was a con about Brexit and then derailed by Covid and this current govt looks like a con about restoring public services but is also being derailed by Trump/Putin.
One election produced a govt with a small majority so more like normal this was Cameron’s 2015 win. However the win wasn’t a sign that we were returning to the normality of the 2 party system.
Cameron’s govt gave us referendums Scottish, An odd form of PR and Brexit. Two of which were very toxic and we carry the unhealed wounds.
Much like others on this blog I can see more convulsions coming. The Tories are a caught out by Trump/Putin and the growth of Reform. Labour seem determined to destroy their people’s party reputation.
I’m sure many of us feel old certainties have gone and new ones have yet to arrive. Troubling times on so many fronts Home and Abroad.
The generation that came out of WW2 did so much to refashion the world and try to build better arrangements for mankind.
We need to rediscover that same spirit but the current cohort of political types are the wrong material. I think many people feel this intuitively and therein lies the danger that extreme conservatives/fascists one again look like they have a solution and people turn to them in desperation.