Less a u-turn than a swerve

It is now largely accepted that the government has moved away from its earlier leaked - or briefed - plan to impose a real-terms cut to personal independence payments (PIP) for disabled people, reportedly withdrawing its cancellation of an inflation-linked increase. In one way it is a vindication of the ferocious backlash since the plans first leaked, and a demonstration that even a government with a large majority is subject to pressure.

However it would be a mistake to then conclude from that that the sharpest of the government’s massive welfare cuts had been sufficiently blunted and therefore that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall have done enough. If all the reports are correct, then the government has more swerved than u-turned – ditching one contentious headline position whilst pushing ahead with welfare cuts said to be between £5bn and £6bn. Indeed, to repeat the point from Friday’s post, no one should be fooled. It is not possible to carve £6billion from the welfare budget and not cause widespread pain and a further squeeze on the living standards of some of the most struggling people in society. A cut on this scale is savage.

Of course it is not unheard of for governments to float a proposal they know is likely to trouble amongst its own supporters with the intention of withdrawing it in order to get the rest of its agenda through, by giving the impression it has listened. This does not seem to fit into that category, however – the process has been considerably more artless than that.

On the substance itself, even without the earlier PIP headline, it still reported that Labour’s package will include tightening eligibility to access PIP and reducing the amount paid to the ‘limited capability for work related activity’ (LCWRA) group of universal credit claimants. According to a Guardian report, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has calculated that cutting Pip by £5bn in 2029-30 by raising the qualifying threshold for support could mean about 620,000 people lose £675 a month on average – and that seventy per cent of those cuts would be concentrated on those families in the poorest half of the income distribution. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has pointed out that, if the full amount in cuts were to go ahead, it would be the biggest cut to disability benefits since the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was created in 2010.

Although on the one hand the government’s planned attack on welfare spending has fed a great deal of very reactionary right wing propaganda about welfare spending and benefits entitlements, it is also generating a healthy amount of scepticism amongst many commentators, in addition to the urgent outrage and concern from those who represent the people most likely to be hit.

Into tomorrow it is first necessary resist the government’s attempt to swerve through and to reject its preposterous effort to give an attack on welfare spending a ‘moral’ veneer.

However, further than that, it is necessary to have a discussion about how these questions are taken through the institutions of the labour movement. We have a Labour government that is about to attack welfare spending on disabled people. Resistance from charities and campaigns is apparent. The labour movement itself - by which I mean the unions, not only sections of the left - needs a co-ordinated rejection of what is planned: one that does not just go through the motions but fights back, including over the government’s economic and social assumptions.