Encouraging currently economically inactive people into work

I haven’t been enthused enough to blog about the election – or ‘race’ as the lazy media calls it – to be the next Conservative party leader and so prime minister. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I have no input into the ‘debate’, such as it is. 160,000 mostly elderly people living in the shires who select our new leader. All I can do is watch. Two, is that they are such dire candidates. Rishi Sunak who has risen to near the top on a bed of privilege and entitlement and Liz Truss, the robotic shapeshifting populist Pound Shop Margaret Thatcher tribute act. It ‘s so weird watching an election between two candidates who don’t remotely address the things I care about. It is hard to say who would make the worst PM but by that measure Truss is very much ahead of the field at the moment.

In lobbing large chunks of red meat to Truss’s base support, there was one slogan – you could hardly call it a policy – that interested me. She is going to “encourage currently economically inactive people into work.” Here, we are back into the world of benefit scroungers who live lives of luxury whilst the rest of us work all the hours God sends, working our fingers literally to the bones. ‘They’ get free housing, especially if they are foreigners. They spend all their money on expensive holidays and wide screen TVs. Yes, Liz. Let’s have a crackdown. But who shall we crack down on?

If what follows sounds clunky and harsh, I apologise in advance, but here’s how I see it. Unemployment levels are historically low with something like 3.7% the working population being without work. I would assert that much of this number is transient and the figure includes many people who are pretty well unemployable. The former drift from one often insecure low paid job to another and the latter have problems of some sort, whether familial, drugs and alcohol, mental health; that kind of thing. For Truss, there is very little ‘low hanging fruit’ to exploit so she must be looking at another group of “economically inactive” group of people: the sick and disabled. Here are actual government figures on the numbers claiming benefits:

By far the highest number of benefit claimants – well, that’s what the government literally calls pensioners in this graph – are state pensioners. Most of them vote Conservative so it’s doubtful that PM Truss would go after them, so the disabled would represent a nice easy hit. Nearly 1.4 million people on DLA with 1.3 million caring for disabled people. Over 2.5 million getting PIP, 1.9 million on ESA. And many of them will also be on Housing Benefit. In the eyes of Truss and her friends and allies in the gutter press, these ‘economically inactive’ people are by definition scroungers. People with no legs should stand on their own feet. Chronic disease should be no obstacle to taking a full time job. And if you’re mentally ill, then snap out of it. And here’s the thing: this must be what Truss has in mind because, contrary to popular belief, there is no army of benefit scroungers. The only people who are doing well out of benefits are those who are also working or have undeclared partners who are working.

I’m ‘economically inactive’ and have been for well over a year. I’m not a million years away from my state pension and I’m happy to take a financial hit for the intervening period between work and being a pensioner. There are many, many people like me, some of whom live on my road and in my village. We have concluded that work is overrated and that our time on Earth is finite. And Truss cannot stop my benefits and force me into low paid work because – and here’s the rub – I’m not entitled to any benefits. So if Truss wants to go after the ‘economically inactive’, which just might be more tricky than she imagines, then I wish her nothing but bad luck. The sight of chronically disabled people being forced into low paid work won’t be a good look, despite what the Mail and Sun might tell us.