Allow me to introduce to you Suella Braverman.
She’s our home secretary, following in the steps of Priti Patel. Suella’s real name is Sue-Ellen because her parents were big fans of the TV soap ‘Dallas’. (I may have made the Dallas bit up.) She went to private school, then Cambridge University, then she benefited from the ‘Erasmus’ scheme, living for two years in France. She is a card-carrying hard Brexiter and supported denying today’s generation benefiting from Erasmus by ending access to it. And she has opinions. Lots of them, mostly bonkers ones. Here’s one from today:
“I want to cut welfare spending. We have far too many people in this country who are fit to work, who are able to work… & they choose to top up their salaries with tax credits & the benefit street culture is a feature of modern Britain”
Although her words don’t make a great deal of sense, I think we can see what she’s getting at. People choose low paid work instead of highly paid work because they prefer to get tax credits rather than higher wages. It’s as simple as that. Of course, simple is what it isn’t. It’s unhinged. I have never met anyone who has set out to secure a job on low wages, eschewing well-paid jobs because that “benefit street culture” is far more appealing. Neither has Sue-Ellen.
“I want to cut welfare spending” as an aim in itself asks important questions. In general, the benefits system is not abused and I speak as someone who spent the bulk of my professional life working in the benefits system. The only people who do well out of benefits are fraudsters. My old colleagues in the DWP are on their case. The vast majority of people who live on Benefits Street are decent and honest people who, for one reason or another, have hit hard times.
Someone claiming benefits because they have, let’s say, cancer is not a scrounger. The man with no legs cannot stand up on his own feet. But maybe Sue-Ellen means another group of benefit recipients: pensioners.
Yes, pensioners because under government legislation the state pension is regarded as a benefit. There are something like 11 million pensioners in our brown and unpleasant land so maybe Sue-Ellen thinks we could probably manage with a few less? Or maybe people like her want to hack around the edges and make English pensioners pay for their own prescriptions, something we know has been mooted by those on the right of the Tory party? That comes under welfare, too. Maybe Sue-Ellen would abolish disability and carers benefits because people like her believe we should all be self-reliant. Do you think I am joking? Trust me, with this lot of fanatics and zealots in charge, I’d say these things are more likely to happen, not less.
It is just not true to suggest, as these people do, that there are millions of idlers choosing the easy life when there are job vacancies to be filled. Many of those who are classed as unemployed are in reality unemployable. The sick and disabled would not choose to be sick and disabled and those damaged by chemicals and alcohol would prefer to be undamaged. But because Brexit has closed off opportunities for European workers, Sue-Ellen and her pals are desperate for someone to blame, to scapegoat, for our problems.
And she is a true believer in the world of Truss, Kwarteng and all the others on the bampot wing of the Tory party who believe that the only way to motivate the very rich is to make the better off still and the only way to motivate the poor is to make them even poorer. You couldn’t make it up and I didn’t.
When Sue-Ellen says she wants to cut welfare spending, she doesn’t just refer to that mythical group of scroungers, but you and me, too.
It is hard to believe there could ever be a home secretary even more stupid and vicious than Priti Patel, but here she is. And if Dallas was ever revived, this Sue-Ellen would resemble quite closely the ultimate villain, JR. She hates all of us, not just the residents of Benefits Street.
