To continue my theme of health, care and Labour's incoherence, already well established this morning, comments in the media forced me to look at a new report from the so-called Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (otherwise, known as the Tony Blair Institute for the Preservation of Wealth Amongst Those Already Possessed Of It) on the subject of what it describes as "An Emergency Handbrake for UK Welfare: Stabilising Spending, Supporting People".
I admit that, so far, I have only been able to read the introduction to this, but it leaves me profoundly worried.
The report, on the surface, is a paper about welfare reform. In reality, it is something rather different: it is an attempt to revive a deeply familiar neoliberal narrative that treats people claiming social security as the real problem in our society, whilst ignoring why so many are unwell, insecure, and unable to sustain work in the first place.
It also seeks to support the core neoliberal idea that it is the individual, and therefore personal, duty of everyone within a society to make themselves fit and well for the purposes of work, with the demands of which they must comply so that the value of their compliant and unquestioning labour may be extracted so that the wealth of a tiny minority within the society in which they live might be increased, seemingly without limit.
The report's argument is straightforward.
First, it claims that too many people are moving onto benefits, particularly since the pandemic, with almost 1,000 people a day reportedly signing on.
Second, it argues that many of the conditions now leading to claims, and most especially those with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression or protected characteristics such as ADHD, should be classified as “non-work-limiting”, meaning that the default assumption should be that claimants remain fit for work and therefore should not receive income support.
Third, it suggests that this could be implemented quickly through secondary legislation as an “emergency handbrake” before wider reform takes place.
And fourth, it argues that this is justified both morally and fiscally. The moral claim is that work is supposedly good for people and that remaining outside the labour market is harmful. The fiscal claim is that incapacity and disability benefits are becoming too expensive, with spending projected to rise sharply.
The Institute proposes a three-part response:
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Create a formal category of “non-work-limiting conditions”.
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Use that category to restrict access to state social security benefits such as universal credit, health support, and personal independence payments.
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Offer limited in-kind support to those who lose entitlement as a result.
The Tony Blair Institute claims this could save billions of pounds and restore public confidence in the social security system.
The obvious question to ask is, why are so many more people unwell? The Health Foundation report I noted this morning makes it clear that they are, but that question is almost entirely absent from this analysis.
Nor is there much mention of the long legacy of austerity in the report, and there appears to be no serious discussion of insecure work, stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, workplace stress, or the psychological consequences of economic insecurity. Nor is there meaningful recognition that many employers are deeply unwilling to accommodate people with fluctuating physical or mental health conditions.
In other words, this paper treats the symptoms of economic failure as if they are the cause of it. That is a serious mistake.
If rising levels of mental ill health are pushing people out of the labour market, then we need to ask why that is happening.
If younger people are struggling, we need to ask what sort of economy they are entering.
If people are physically unwell, we need to ask why access to healthcare is deteriorating.
And if work is supposedly so beneficial, we need to ask why so much work in the UK is insecure, badly paid, exhausting and devoid of dignity.
The implication of the Blair approach is clear: redefine illness, tighten eligibility, remove cash support, and hope people return to work. But coercion is not reform. Real reform would begin elsewhere.
It would invest in the NHS so people can actually access treatment.
It would improve job quality and employment rights.
It would tackle poverty, insecure housing and debt.
It would recognise that many people undertake valuable unpaid work through care, volunteering and community support.
And it would stop pretending that reducing the number of social security claimants is the same thing as improving well-being.
This matters because the paper reflects a wider political shift. Once again, the debate is being framed around the affordability of support rather than the affordability of a broken economic model that is making people ill.
The Tony Blair framing needs to be challenged. Social security exists because people sometimes need security that is otherwise unavailable to them. A civilised society would ask why demand is rising and address the cause. It does not simply move the goalposts and declare fewer people eligible for help.
The conclusion is obvious. Blair's proposals are not in any way motivated by concern for people, the real challenges that they face (and it is indisputable that depression, anxiety, autism, and ADHD can and do create such challenges), the failure of the economy to provide worthwhile work for all who live within it, instead requiring that they conform to its stereotype of a model and compliant employee and the failures arising from austerity. It is instead only motivated by the desire of a few in our society to limit the size of government, minimise tax revenue, incapacitate the processes of care and enrich elites at the same time.
The Tony Blair Institute now belongs in the Tufton Street orbit of far-right think tanks intent on destroying well-being for all but the very wealthy in our society. This report has to be read in that light.
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It seems to me and I can speak from experience that in the same way that the NHS has a problem with ‘bed blocking’ there is also a major issue over people who are not well enough to work – and I will use it in its broadest sense of function properly in society but not unwell enough to get the more specialised treatment that they need to get better.
Agreed, entirely.
Like I said earlier this morning, absolute evil.
Still, not as vile as the Palantir twenty-two-point document/manifesto posted on x on April 18th. That’s a step even further. 🙁
I meant to address that…
Please do Richard.
Your post last week, Freedom From Fear, was one of your best.
On a daily basis, everyone is bombarded with fear, fear, fear – questions with no positive answers.
I come to this blog for hope amd your posts and the great contributors give me that.
The sad truth is that many people just bury their heads in the sand and pretend its not happening.
Thank you
The much maligned Sadiq Kahn is standing up to Palantir (as of this moment). He deserves credit for sticking to what used to be Labour’s principles.
It really does surprise me that no one – unless my sweep of the Internet is too limited, which is highly likely – seems to have picked up on the fact that in The Lord of the Rings the Palantir is used by Saruman the White to spy on opponenta of Sauron, the Dark Lord, and thereby baulk their efforts by keeping Saur¥on informed. A perfect analogy, I’d say.
Agreed
It has been noted
The Tony Blair Institute: Choose Barbarism
Typo’s – ” the afiloures arising ferom auterity”
Thanks. Edited.
The oracle for Oracle?
Your comments resonate entirely with me. As a heterodox practitioner of management styles and problem solving, I see that the local authority I work for talks about recognizing us as all different and being valued. Yet I can tell you that line managers see things differently – they have a set management ‘aesthetic’ and you are expected to conform to it no matter what (working from home even when things are going wrong etc).
What Blair tells me is the same – after all the bollocks about ‘freedom’ now comes the freedom the Neo-libs and Thatcherites really wanted – freedom from caring, freedom from responsibility, freedom from considering others, freedom to self-realise their priorities.
This means what they want from the rest of us is compliance; uniformity. It makes it easy for them you see. Like those managers I work with.
Blair’s is the manifesto of ignorance and the negation of variety. But what do you expect from a dyed in the wool Neo-lib whose secret objective is always the Neo Liberal objective of MONOPOLY.
I just turned your “Freedom froms” into an X and Bluesky post. Thanks
Thank you – but in truth it is Professor Timothy Snyder in his book ‘On Freedom’ (2024) to whom I am grateful for pointing this out in his concept of ‘negative freedom’ (p. 277 has a table indicating what these negatives are, discussion is in the text (for example pp. 14-17).
Is anyone else sick of listening to what Tony Blair has to say?
This executive summary is nothing but propagandistic, authoritarian welfare rhetoric. It moralises work, massages public opinion into viewing welfare claimants as the problem, and disregards the wider causes of rising ill health, insecurity and worklessness.
The public thinks the current system is unaffordable and unsustainable. I wonder why?
Could it be because they are persistently told so?
The graphs used in the executive summary (sources: TBI and YouGov, which are hardly independent or unbiased) appear to have been selected to support a predetermined conclusion. They are stripped of context to reinforce the idea that the UK is somehow overspending on welfare and must urgently slash expenditure. But compared with whom? On what baseline? And why is the focus on cutting support rather than asking why so many more people are becoming unwell, economically insecure, and unable to sustain work in the first place?
Is the real purpose to manufacture consent for shifting public money away from welfare, care and social security towards military spending?
After all, Tony Blair now appears to be in the business of promoting “peace” through his association with his pal Trump and the so-called Board of Peace.
And how democratic is it to pull an “emergency handbrake” on welfare through secondary legislation? Are people on benefits not part of the public too?
Has anyone asked disabled people, people with mental health conditions, neurodivergent people, unpaid carers, or those pushed out of work by illness what they actually need?
Who is speaking for them in this debate?
There are no references to medical evidence in this report, at all
Surely the very first thing in a report like this should be medical evidence
Isn’t that also the point there are charities but what they do is not enough, not heard or not listened to often. And even then I know in autism circles what they are doing is not enough and or not applicable to all individuals at all life stages. The rot is much deeper, and one has to wonder why we need people to work our behalf in our defence in the first place when it the government, should defend us not be the one we need defending against. I’m starting to wonderwhat they are planning soon now disabled are targeted it’s already been the migrant workers this week, it’s like a playbook labour follow attack one then the next….
It has happened before…….
An excellent post. The final sentence sums up the odious Tony Blair “institute” precisely.
Perhaps Blair et al read Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon in which illness is cruelly punished and crime is treated sympathetically not realising it was written as a satire.
Sad but important reading. Thank you for all your health-related posts today. The lack of medical data in that report is unconscionable and telling.
Last week I attended the tercentenary of my alma mater, Edinburgh Medical School. As well as reminding us of its great heritage and achievements, it understandably proudly presented recent technological advances and the prospects for future break through that its researchers are currently exploring. However I came away rather disappointed that no one discussed the paradoxes declining healthy life and indeed life expectancy despite such advances. The answer is of course political, but it is profoundly discouraging that so few of my profession are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and say so.
Medics are not now taught to think. They are taught to apply neoliberal algorithms and to take the rewards for doing so until replaced by AI, as surely many will be since they no longer “profess” and do not as a result need to be paid for doing so.
To me the most sickening aspect of this Blairite intervention is the faux progressive framing that critiques the big bad state (always in its ‘welfare’ mode of course especially concerning the conspicious working age claimant) which has the audacity to label people against their authentic entrepreneurial selves and emasculate them in the sinister recidivist Stalinism of old school collectivism. Blair’s big centrist Dad sees all act is creepy performative and laced with bad faith.