What have McMillan, Parkinsons UK, Mencap, MS Society, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Arthritis Research UK and the Royal National Institute for Blind People and over 50 other charities in common? Answer: they are all calling on DWP secretary Iain Duncan Smith to reverse his cuts to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The government itself says it is cutting some 1.4 billion from ESA so you have to suspect, on the basis of Duncan Smith’s track record, that it is considerably more than that. McMillan warns that some victims of cancer will be rendered homeless as a result of the cuts and all the charities say that the cuts will have a devastating effect on some of the most vulnerable people in the land. How can they do this?
They can do this because they are Tories, that’s how. Put simply, they do not believe in a welfare state and everything they have done since 2010, firstly with the assistance of the useful idiots of the Lib Dems and now without them, has been to worsen the lives of the poor. That’s not how Duncan Smith sees it, of course. Oh, no. These charities are “scaremongering”, you see. I say that they are slashing benefits to the undeserving poor, Duncan Smith says he is trying to help those “trapped on benefits”. He is trying to free them up, you see. These people with terminal diseases, or confined to one draughty room with a condition that will only get worse, those lazy skivers with learning difficulties; “we want to give them a hand up not a hand out.” Yes, Iain. I was born yesterday. I believe everything you say.
I have seen many examples of the heartless, uncaring Tories. Not long ago, they scrapped the Independent Living Fund, which enabled some 17,000 disabled people to live independently rather than in residential care. “We can’t afford luxuries like that,” Duncan Smith probably said. “Let them eat cake, if they can afford to buy any, that is. Anyway, I am off to buy some new underpants and charge them to the taxpayer, so goodbye for now.” (Duncan Smith really did buy some underpants and claimed expenses for so doing. I didn’t make up that bit.)
What sort of country do we live in when much loved charities like those I mentioned earlier present evidence to the government and they are idly dismissed by the secretary of state who has no idea how some of our citizens live. Well, either he has no idea, or worse that he just doesn’t care.
This is the same Duncan Smith who once said they he could live on £53 a week “if I had to”. This would be a slight comedown from the £1600 a week he earns as a minister, but then, as he married into serious money many years ago, I guess putting bread on the table is not a major problem to him. Even after tax, Duncan Smith can afford to do and buy anything he likes. For victims of illness and the disabled, they have no such luxuries. So what do we do?
God knows – well, he would if he existed – that we need some kind of opposition beyond the “scaremongers” of extreme charities like Parkinsons UK and the Leonard Cheshire homes, because at the moment the charities are all we, or should I say those under attack by Duncan Smith, actually have. Labour still navel gazes under its new leader, concentrating almost solely on internal Labour politics, strengthening their grip on power, a kind of far left Nero, fiddling why the lives of the most vulnerable people in the land are being torn apart.
Jeremy Corbyn has spent most of his working life as a career backbencher and career public speaker on behalf of various groups. Has he learned, yet, on how to oppose the cuts to ESA inside and outside of parliament? There’s little evidence so far that he has, but we know he will be there for the foreseeable future and to most people the plight of the sick and disabled is far more important than how he can control the machinery of the Labour Party.
Corbyn was right to go to Calais to draw attention to the terrible conditions at the Jungle. Now he must turn his attention to matters at home and they don’t come any bigger than this one. The public are with him on the plight of the vulnerable and this is a good fight to choose. Iain Duncan Smith’s taxpayer funded underpants are on fire. Go get him, Jeremy, or leave it to someone else if you don’t think you’re up to it.
