It is shameful that Labour buys into the rhetoric that people who need welfare are scum

[T_i_B]

Good article, and I must say that you have to wonder how on earth Rachel Reeves has ended up in the shadow cabinet.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/03/it-shameful-labour-buys-rhetoric-people-who-need-welfare-are-scum

In a culture of vilifying Benefits Street and baiting the cost of Katie Price’s severely disabled eleven-year-old child, Labour appears terrified of being on the wrong side of the scrounger versus striver binary that has been carved for them. That fear is driving them away from their own values and, ironically, in this quest for votes, from the people who would naturally support them.

Multiple sections of society – the disabled, the chronically ill, the low earners, the zero-hours contract workers – risk being widely turned off by the very rhetoric Labour appear convinced will win them over. This week, Jack Monroe publicly defected to the Green party, citing Labour’s response to “welfare” as a key reason. Social media swarms with increasingly disaffected want-to-be Labour voters; people who know what it is to spend the day afraid of the brown envelope, not only from debt collectors but the Department for Work and Pensions. Demonising benefit claimants does not appeal to the voter with MS who has to live on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), just as "other-ing" benefit claimants is a meaningless narrative to the families needing to claim housing benefit because their wages don’t cover the rent.

Disability is a key example of this. Labour is making (often) silent strides on the concerns of disabled and chronically ill people. This year, they re-launched Disability Labour. Kate Green, Labour’s shadow disability minister, speaks out about disability benefit backlogs. Scrapping the bedroom tax is firmly on the agenda. Reeves herself says she wants a welfare state that is there “to protect people in times of need” – for example, if someone “became disabled”.

But it is difficult to present yourself as on the side of the disabled while signing up to a wider, dividing portrayal of social security. Words like “tougher than the Tories” and “not the party of people on benefits” are personal stings that people struggling on disability benefits remember. This stuff is not empty political rhetoric. It is a reflection on people’s lives, their basic self-esteem. Crass, Daily Mail-esque statements on benefits are cheap, pointless jibes that do nothing but leave people who need the support of the state feeling like scum. Or as one voter on ESA put it for the New Statesman this week, as if she “need[s] to apologise for claiming money so I can eat”.

[non sociopath skin]

1. Appalling. Apparently "New Labour" is still alive and kicking.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

2. Excellent article

I first became suspicious of Tory Blair when he started cutting benefits for disabled people in work.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. Hmm. Political parties everywhere keep moving to the far right. Why is that, and who's "counting"

the votes? (I'll tell you who's "counting" the votes --> Corporations owned by the 1%, that's who. Do you trust them to tell the truth about how we vote? I sure don't!)~