UK Politics

Trump isn't over the line yet, but Starmer seems confident enough that Trump has won.

The DWP confirms that draconian ‘savings’ are coming down the track. Are we a nation that will repair hospitals, but not help a nurse with long Covid?

In the days after the budget, the headlines were dominated by talk of Rachel Reeves’s “tax and spend” bonanza. The message was clear: austerity is officially over. When there was concern about squeezed incomes, it was solely for workers. As the Mail front page put it: “Reeves’ £40bn tax bombshell for Britain’s strivers”. Almost a week later, there has still barely been a word about the policy set to hit the group long scapegoated as Britain’s skivers: the billions of pounds’ worth of benefit cuts for disabled people.

Making up just a couple of lines in a 77-minute speech, you’d have been forgiven for dozing past Reeves’ blink-and-you’d-miss-it bombshell. With a record number of Britons off work with long-term illness, the government will need to “reduce the benefits bill”, she said, before noting ministers had “inherited” the Conservatives’ plans to reform the work capability assessment (WCA). That plan, let’s not forget, was to take up to £4,900 a year each from 450,000 people who are too sick or disabled to work – a move that the Resolution Foundation says would “degrade living standards” for families already on some of the lowest incomes in the country.

That’s on top of Tory proposals to tighten eligibility for personal independence payments (Pip) – which Labour has been consulting on since the election – that would push the cuts to a steep £3bn.

“We will deliver those savings as part of our fundamental reforms to the health and disability benefits system that the work and pensions secretary [Liz Kendall] will bring forward,” Reeves went on. It turns out austerity isn’t over for everyone.

It’s no wonder that many disabled people – and charities and journalists for that matter – thought this meant Labour would implement the outgoing Tory policies. In fact, the government has no such plan. When I spoke to the Department for Work and Pensions, it confirmed it will make the same “savings” the last government committed to – but it cannot as yet say how those savings will be made.

A spokesperson confirmed to me that the WCA needs to be “reformed or replaced as part of a proper plan to genuinely support disabled people into work – bringing down the benefits bill and ensuring we continue to deliver the savings set out by the previous government. But these sorts of changes shouldn’t be made in haste. That’s why we’re taking the time to review this in the round before setting out next steps on our approach.” When I pressed, they added that changes to the WCA – whatever they may be – will come into effect in early 2025.

There is something faintly ludicrous about the government announcing billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits before working out how it is going to do it, akin to the Child Catcher wielding a big net and not caring who it is he traps. It is right that the WCA – long known to be a dangerously faulty assessment – is consigned to the scrapheap. But “reform” should not mean less funding, and reducing funding should not be the purpose of reform.

Much like when George Osborne aimed to cut the disability benefits bill by a fifth, “welfare reform” based on arbitrary cost-cutting says the quiet part out loud: benefits won’t be awarded based on who needs them – just on what they cost. It is social security by spreadsheet, severing the social contract that promises the state will be there in times of sickness and disability, and adding a footnote that says, “but only if we can afford it”. That last week’s budget revealed huge investment for infrastructure at the same time as disability benefit cuts exposes how even the affordability argument is largely fabricated. There is money to fix hospital buildings but not to feed a nurse bedbound with long Covid.

The financial impact of such “reform” on those relying on benefits is well established but the psychological toll should not be underestimated. Since gaining power, Labour has drip-fed the rightwing press sound bites and op-eds on potential benefit cuts, leaving news outlets to speculate wildly for clicks. The budget’s half-announcement has only added to the confusion and fear, issuing vague dog whistles of “fraud” and high “benefit bills” while forcing millions of people to wait months to find out if they will lose the money they need to live.

It is not simply that such delays create uncertainty for those affected, they also create space and legitimacy for a politics of resentment and prejudice. In the days after the budget, Reform MP Rupert Lowe took to X to list some of the health conditions people receive Pip for and pronounce to his followers which ones were least-deserving. Hours later, former Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott went on TalkTV to call disability benefit recipients “parasites”.

It would be easy to say this stuff is repulsive – it is – but it is also a very real symptom of years of stagnating wages, high bills, pressured public services and a media ecosystem that too often distorts and divides. Crudely, these conditions do two things to a population that we are already seeing fester in Britain: they make some people sick and reliant on the safety net – and they turn other people against them.

By the end of this parliament, the Office for Budget Responsibility says, half of all claims for the main benefit will be on health grounds, as the impact of NHS delays, a pandemic and increasing poverty continues to bite. As Labour mulls over what it will cost our society to provide this support, it might be worth considering what it would cost us not to. That particular price cannot be measured in bills and debt but is altogether more ruinous: a nation doomed to repeat the same mistakes, growing ever meaner and colder towards those who have less.

That Kemi Badenoch – a small-state zealot whose culture war targets include autistic children – is now leader of the opposition only reinforces the urgency of a Labour government that stokes the best, not worst, of our instincts. By its own timeline, the party now has a few months to hunt for its conscience. Disabled people can only hope it finds it.

Seems apt to post this today

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is in the US where he is due to attend an election day party at Donald Trump’s Florida home in Mar-a-Lago. In an interview with the Telegraph, he has said that Trump, who is a friend, should accept defeat if he loses the presidential election. (See 10am.)

But Farage said he expected Trump to win. And he said he was particularly excited by the prospect of a Trump victory because Trump has said he will put Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and X owner, in charge of a government efficiency commission. Farage said that Musk would slash government spending, and that this would provide a blueprint for what Reform UK would propose for Britain. He told the Telegraph:

"This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.

There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.

Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting.

They’ll all be gone. They’ll all be fired. Why do we need Whitehall with all these useless, ghastly Marxists? Universities have all become madrassas of Marxism. The whole thing is appalling.

Trump’s first term taking on the deep state was impossible because they had no idea how it worked; he finished up with a lot of people around him who weren’t supporters and who were imposed upon him.

They didn’t know an American president has the power to appoint 3,000 people. This time they have been working really hard on that for 18 months."

Rightwingers regularly complain that the state is too large (Kemi Badenoch believes this too), but it’s unusual to argue that Musk’s management of Twitter has been a success. Since he took over, it has lost three quarters of its value, equivalent to a sum worth around $30bn. That is partly because, after Musk sacked most of the moderators, people were less willing to use and advertise on the site.

At least one good thing happened today: Starmer's government published an improved ministerial code.

A Jewish academic who grew up in Israel was arrested by London's Metropolitan police following a speech he gave at a pro-Palestine demonstration in the British capital, during which he said that Israel "cannot win against Hamas".

Haim Bresheeth, a child of Holocaust survivors and the founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine, was arrested during a demonstration outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in north London.

In a video recording of Bresheeth’s arrest, a police officer informs him that he is being arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 for “making a hate speech”.

“Israel has not achieved any of its declared aims, either in Gaza in Lebanon in, in Iran or anywhere else,” Bresheeth said in his speech. “What has it achieved? Murder, mayhem, genocide, racism, destruction, this is what they’re good at,” Bresheeth said. “But they cannot fight the resistance, they have lost every single time. “They cannot win against Hamas, they cannot win against Hezbollah, they cannot win against the Houthis. They cannot win against the united resistance to the genocide they have started.”

I thought we would eventually see this race-baiter come out, but I didn't expect it to be even before the announcement of Badenoch's election was made.

The asylum system would “descend into chaos” if Labour refused to open more hotels for people seeking refuge in the UK, a Home Office minister has told the Guardian.

Angela Eagle, the minister for borders, security and asylum, said officials had been forced to find more private accommodation for new arrivals and blamed the backlog of tens of thousands of cases built up under the last government.

The government’s decision to open asylum hotels despite Keir Starmer’s pledge that he would close them have been condemned by the Tories and Reform.

In Labour’s election manifesto, Starmer said he would “end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.

In her first public comments on the development, Eagle said ministers had no choice but to make the temporary move after discovering nearly 120,000 unprocessed asylum claims after Labour took power.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22046046

cross-posted from: https://hcommons.social/users/adachika192/statuses/113409952846501174

More than 100 BBC staff accuse broadcaster of Israel bias in Gaza coverage (Independent, 2024-11-01)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-israel-gaza-letter-tim-davie-bias-palestine-b2636737.html
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(Link to the “Letter for Gaza”
https://substack.com/inbox/post/151024243?utm%5C_campaign=post&showWelcomeOnShare=true )

“More than 100 BBC employees are accusing the corporation of providing favourable coverage toward Israel and are calling on the broadcaster to ‘recommit to fairness, accuracy, and impartiality’ over its reporting on Gaza.

“In a letter sent to Tim Davie, signed by more than 230 members of the media industry, including 101 anonymous BBC staff, the corporation is criticised for failing its own editorial standards by lacking ‘consistently fair and accurate evidence-based journalism in its coverage of Gaza’”.

#BBC #OpenLetter #FairJournalism
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@israel

Joint Statement from left leaning politicians criticising the new Budget.

Labour’s first budget punishes the “working people” they claim to support. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves promised to deliver real change to the electorate, after 14 years of Tory rule. This week, they have broken that promise. This budget is austerity by another name.

While we welcome the government’s decision to invest in school and hospital buildings, it is extremely disappointing that these investments have been undermined by a swathe of public sector cuts, cruel attacks on the worst off, and a dogmatic refusal to redistribute wealth and power. These are not “tough choices” for government ministers, but for ordinary people who are forced to choose between heating their home and putting food on the table.

Labour is raising defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP while telling us there is no money to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. This is a lie. There is plenty of money – it’s just in the wrong hands. The richest 1% in the UK hold more wealth than 70% of Britons. By refusing to impose a wealth tax, this government has chosen to force vulnerable communities to pay the price for years of economic failure, instead of making the richest pay their fair share. Labour’s first budget shows us whose side they’re on.

Years of austerity and privatisation have decimated our public services and pushed millions into poverty, disproportionately impacting women, people of colour and disabled people. Making millions of children, working, retired and disabled people poorer damages our entire economy and stretches our public services. An austerity economy is a false economy.

We, along with nearly 100 progressive Independent and Green politicians across the country, are calling on the Labour government to: 1) introduce wealth taxes; 2) abolish the two-child benefit cap and stop attacking welfare recipients; 3) reverse cuts to winter fuel; 4) restore the £2 bus cap; and 5) invest in a Green New Deal.

We refuse to believe that child poverty, mass hunger and homelessness are inevitable in the sixth largest economy in the world. A progressive movement is growing up and down the country, demanding a real alternative to this race to the bottom between Labour and the Tories, which has seen the new government perpetuate decades of austerity and rampant corporate greed.

The Tories’ collapse allowed Labour to come to power with the lowest vote share ever won by any single-party majority government. Labour haemorrhaging votes to progressive independents and Greens in their heartlands should be a lesson to this government: you are wrong to believe that progressive voters have nowhere else to go. Our movement is growing every day – and you ignore the demand for a real alternative at your peril.

-- Jeremy Corbyn MP Independent, Carla Denyer MP Green party co-leader, Adrian Ramsay MP Green party co-leader, Sian Berry MP Green party, Ben Lake MP Plaid Cymru, Ann Davies MP Plaid Cymru, Liz Saville Roberts MP Plaid Cymru, Llinos Medi MP Plaid Cymru, Zack Polanski Green party deputy leader and London assembly member, Leanne Mohamad Independent candidate for Ilford North, Jamie Driscoll Former North of Tyne mayor, Andrew Feinstein Former ANC MP and Independent candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, Leanne Wood Former leader, Plaid Cymru, Beth Winter Former Labour MP for Cynon Valley, Hilary Schan Chair, We Deserve Better and Independent councillor in Worthing, Anthony Slaughter Wales Green party leader

The seven shipments of F-35 parts from RAF Marham took place on 11 November 2023, 13 January, 21 January, 7 February, 28 April, 28 July, and 6 August 2024.

In six of those cases, the registered sender was the Lockheed Martin UK Integrated Systems office which is based in Havant, a town near Portsmouth.

An MoD spokesperson said: “In keeping with the government’s announcement on arms exports in September, there have been no exports of F-35 parts direct to Israel via RAF Marham since that licencing suspension.

“UK components for the multinational F-35 programme are excluded from that decision, except where going directly to Israel”.