Or could this all be an undercover anarchist joke to show the system’s bankruptcy
~ Tabitha Troughton ~
Cheerily kicking kittens, earnestly pulling wings off flies, making the difficult choice to slam the freezer shut on next door’s puppies: has the government gone mad, we demand to know, but answer comes there none, unless it’s in the rictus of ‘Liz’ Kendall’s face, or the staring eyes of ‘Wes’ Streeting, lit up from inside by an unholy glare, like a demonic pumpkin’s.
True, very little this government has done has sounded sane, in the casual sense of the word, which it is why it is so easy and pleasant to memory-hole its short and pungent history. Every so often people still mutter “Peter Mandelson is the ambassador to the US”, but this is largely residual trauma. Straight off the blocks with an astonishingly snappy immiseration of our poorest children and pensioners, the government have shot through selling off the country to Blackrock, rejected attempts to ameliorate Brexit, consigned nature and wildlife to the devil, trashed local democracy, eviscerated struggling farmers, and almost every week thrown up a new spectacle to throw up to. If ‘Bojo’ perfected the art of the dead cat, this administration has perfected the exhumation and exhibition of its month old, now glutinous, corpse.
Streeting and Kendall were spearheading, almost literally, the government’s latest actionable plan for the disabled: £5 billions worth of welfare cuts. So Downing Street provides political and practical cover for genocidal war criminals, while the silence of the ever-increasing dead mingles with cries of desperation and incredulity from a UK where millions have already been mugged to their knees, hundreds of thousands have died prematurely thanks to slightly less terrible Conservative policies, and the rest are realising it’s only a matter of time before they can’t escape from the place either. The British public have always been for a ceasefire, against arms to Israel, against being used by these murderous freaks: it’s no good pointing out that what their ‘leaders’ can condone abroad is hardly likely to result in decency at home. They know.
Nevertheless, the latest punishment aimed directly at the disabled is serving to repulse even the few government hacks who remain loyal. The proposals may be economically illiterate, but they’re also a mix of pettiness, stupidity, mindless exhortation, and casual cruelty. “You don’t necessarily get enough points to live on if you need help washing below the waist” and “If you’re under 22 and disabled, you’re probably screwed” are impossible to defend, but that didn’t stop the government from trying, by calling them ‘moral’, in an interesting example of manufactured contronym.
Meanwhile, propaganda viciously pumps out the message that disabled people are scroungers, shirkers, fraudsters. Calls to suicide helplines soar. At the same time Kim Leadbeater is, at Starmer’s behest, rushing through the Assisted Suicide Bill, which now, after the majority of safeguarding amendments have been discarded, or voted down by a stacked committee, has almost unlimited potential to provide a new income stream for Serco.
Despised by the Reform supporters they are trying both feebly and cynically to attract, with this latest hit the government has now alienated even more of their own, apart from those who don’t object so very much to kitten kicking. And still they continue to fawn on the rich and the corporations, refusing (even against the pleas of ‘patriotic millionaires’) to introduce a wealth tax, which even in a feeble Spanish iteration recently raised enough to stop children plunging further into poverty; while bailing out Thames Water and arms dealers with more of our billions, as their polling continues to plummet.
Is this, one could wonder, some kind of undercover anarchist joke? Are the malignant cult who’ve taken over Labour really there to demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of the system? Or, more realistically, are they now deliberately trying to throw the next election—and if that’s to Reform, so be it? Consider that they triumphantly stole power with no ideas, no care for the people, no conscience, no scruples, no understanding, and no plan. Eight months later they’re loathed across an impressive spectrum, and they all look terrible, like ghastly cut-outs of their former selves reflected in a Hall of Mirrors. As the public waits for the next pointless, violent attack on our better natures, it’s difficult to avoid concluding that these people are not simply mad, bad, incompetent, corrupt, or hapless, but are now deliberately shooting themselves in the foot.
And why wouldn’t you? If Starmer loses in 2029, he will, as is traditional, go straight to the Lords, which he has strangely failed to abolish. Reeves will spend her time lecturing lucky audiences across the US. Streeting—well, either heading up Reform’s deportation squads, or recanting and becoming a librarian. Anything is possible. Even that community organising and cohesion will surf the rising tide of fury at these injustices.
Image: House of Commons on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
