Because the Guardian notes this morning:

Rachel Reeves has mentioned she “cannot depart welfare untouched” this parliament, with the Treasury understood to be contemplating axing as much as £1bn in tax breaks for a scheme offering automobiles for disabled individuals.

They added this:

“We won’t depart welfare untouched,” she informed Channel 4 Information when requested about modifications to the profit system. “We won’t get to the tip of this parliamentary session and I’ve mainly finished nothing … We now have to do reform in the correct method and take individuals with us.”

The Guardian then famous

It’s now understood to be contemplating eradicating tax breaks for the Motability scheme, underneath which disabled persons are exempt from VAT and insurance coverage premium tax on automobiles subsidised by the federal government.

So, we’re in for an additional spherical of the austerity blame recreation, the place it’s advised that the blame for what’s flawed within the UK lies with the disabled, the poorest, and reckless librarians in Wolverhampton who’ve overstocked their cabinets, in addition to these profligate nurses on the night time shift at your native hospital who’ve the temerity to anticipate to be paid for turning as much as work while additionally having to pay at extortinate charges for carparking on website for the privilege of doing so.

That narrative must be challenged head-on.

First, this isn’t “reform in the correct method.” It’s an assault on among the most susceptible individuals in society underneath the quilt of fiscal accountability. The notion that eradicating tax breaks for disabled individuals will meaningfully enhance public funds is absurd. The entire saving is trivial within the context of the £1.3 trillion authorities price range. However the sign it sends, which is that these already marginalised should “share the burden”, is politically handy for these unwilling to confront the actual causes of the UK’s malaise.

Second, the concept welfare should be “touched” in any respect reveals a deep ideological bias. The welfare state isn’t the issue: it’s the lifeline maintaining hundreds of thousands afloat after fifteen years of wage stagnation, housing crises, and crumbling public infrastructure. To assault it’s to confess that the federal government has no imaginative and prescient for funding, productiveness, or structural reform, however solely a drained return to austerity logic.

Third, this announcement exposes the dishonesty of Labour’s supposed fiscal prudence. Reeves insists that she should “do one thing” to show her financial seriousness, however seriousness would imply addressing the huge subsidies flowing to the rich through tax breaks and to landlords, fossil gasoline corporations, oligoplist supermarkets whose workers need to depend on advantages because the wages they’re paid are iunsufficent to stay on, and, in fact, our banks who contimue to reap the rewards for curiosity being paid on central financial institution reserve accounts wholly unnecessarily to the extent that it’s. It will additionally imply reforming the tax system in order that revenue from wealth, capital beneficial properties, and company earnings are all appropriately taxed. As an alternative, she is proposing to go after disabled individuals’s automobiles.

Fourth, the language of “doing reform in the correct method” is Orwellian. Reform has turn out to be a euphemism for cuts. On this framing, the state is rarely too small to prop up personal fairness and offshore traders (like JLR, which not too long ago acquired a £1.5 billion mortgage assure as a result of its personal administration was incompetent at managing its dangers), however all the time too beneficiant to those that rely upon it to stay.

The results of this sort of coverage are clear:

• It normalises the concept welfare is an issue to be mounted moderately than a cornerstone of a civilised society.
• It pushes disabled individuals additional into isolation, stripping away mobility and dignity within the identify of balancing the books.
• It shifts public anger away from company energy, wealth focus, and systemic underinvestment — and in the direction of the individuals least answerable for any of them.

This isn’t about fiscal necessity; it’s about political alternative. Reeves’ assertion reveals that Labour has chosen to proceed the austerity narrative moderately than problem it. The selection to “contact welfare” is concurrently a call to go away wealth untouched.

A genuinely brave authorities would say that social safety isn’t a drain however an obligation; that mobility for disabled residents isn’t a privilege however a proper; and that the actual reform this nation wants is of a tax system rigged in favour of the rich and companies.

If Rachel Reeves needs to “take individuals together with her,” she would possibly begin by standing with these individuals, and never by taking away their automobiles.

Taking additional motion

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