Labour Leadership Hopefuls Queue To ‘Kick’ Benefit Claimants
With many thanks to Benefits And Work.
MPs hoping to be the Labour party’s next leader or deputy leader are lining up to kick claimants as they seek to blame anyone but themselves for the disastrous election result. In one case the attack on claimants was made from the offices of accountants who narrowly escaped prosecution for involvement in tax dodging.
Leadership front-runner Andy Burnham supports the Conservative’s plans to lower the level of the household benefits cap, plunging more families into poverty, According to the Independent Burnham argued that people see Labour as being “soft on people who want something for nothing”.
In a speech to Ernst and Young, the accountancy firm which paid out £82 million in 2013 to avoid criminal charges in the US for aiding tax dodgers, Burnham argued:
“I was talking about an impression on the doorstep and there is that feeling, some people say, that Labour want to be soft on people who want something for nothing. We’ve got to be honest about that. That is a feeling that’s out there, that was still being replayed at this election.”
Another leadership contender, Liz Kendall, told the Guardian she supported the cap on household benefits because “voters in my constituency do not feel people who are not working should get more than those in work”.
According to the Guardian Kendall also claimed that the public do not trust Labour on benefits and that “too often people are being left without the tools they need to get themselves back into work”.
Meanwhile the Sun claims that Caroline Flint, hoping to become Labour’s deputy leader told them that the Labour needs to start attacking benefits scroungers as much as bankers and should give people choosing to live off benefits a “kick up the backside”.
The only – partial – exception to the attack on claimants has been leadership candidate Yvette Cooper, who told the BBC that:
“What I won’t do is fall in to what I think is a Tory trap of using language which stigmatises those who are not working. I don’t think that is about Labour values.
“I think the important thing is to talk about responsibility – responsibility to work, responsibility to contribute – but not to stigmatise those who are unable to work, perhaps because they are too sick or too disabled to do so.”
However, Cooper still supports the proposal to lower the benefits cap.
There was good reason for claimants to vote Labour in the recent election in the hope of preventing the Conservatives returning to power and imposing £12 billion in benefits cuts. However, by 2020 it is likely that the Tories will have done their worst.
If Labour continue to use the language of prejudice and division when it comes to benefits, it seems likely that claimants at the next election will take their votes elsewhere.
Same Difference 
The little tory party
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Seems to me Labour have lost their way and learnt nothing from losing the election and the “Blue Labour” tag, If they keep on like this they will never be able to come back. There are a lot of new parties emerging like Left food Forward who know where they are going and the people they represent who will take the usual Labour voters
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Reblogged this on Notes from the north.
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Responsibility? Who do they think TAUGHT some of us responsibility? We grew up under Thatcher and Major, Blair and Brown and many of us grew up with parents who worked hard to keep their heads above water whatever supposed social bracket or income bracket we started in. Many even grew up in households that voted Conservative for generations but we now take the rap as disabled people for the ideological austerity aimed at dismantling any kind of caring society. Many families were left in poverty by Thatcher and have continued there ever since, having lost family and friends. Some were luckier and still managed to scrape by in jobs that just about sustained them through the tough times and with the addition of the safety net for sick children or parents or themselves. Many did far better and still complain. Many from all walks of life just get on with what they have always done and what they need to do, working, playing, loving, fighting, waiting for the holidays or a less rainy day.
Responsibility? I’ve heard that phrase used by Labour campaigners in the run up to the election and I KNEW what was coming…. I’ve spent most of my life feeling RESPONSIBLE trying to obeys the rules, did what authority figures wanted and made myself sick with worry for a toe out of line. As a disabled kid I wasn’t given responsibilities, was more often stuck in the corner and told I was ‘in the way’ but boy did I feel responsible when anything went wrong! I was taught to work hard – so hard I actually had adrenal failure by the time I was aged 18 and stress related illnesses on top of my CP as I’m sure a lot of disabled kids do today. By 25 I had mental health problems specifically created by the stresses of first abusive family, then abuse at school (sexual and emotional) and then further sexual and emotional abuse and from the absolute draining of hope as I realised that there was to be no escape from feeling that I had let everybody down because despite working hard all my life to be good enough I was not going to be able to find someone who was prepared to see past my disabilities and pay me enough to even scrape by on. I felt responsible that I had ended up on benefits because the only people I heard about on benefits were stigmatised. Am I supposed to feel responsible for not ‘rising above disability mental and physical and abuse mental and physical that would have killed most people?
Many of us went to schools where a ‘Thatcherite work ethic was taught – arrogance for some, kicks for many, kudos for those who half killed themselves trying and disgust for those deemed to be letting the side down. Funnily enough most of my schooling was done under Thatcher in a local Comp that thought itself a cut above and guess who was endlessly bullied – the poor kids, the disabled kids, the kids from traveller families and certainly the kids from any ‘culture’ or sub culture that didn’t fit into the right clique. I pity the kids who have to have the same fight I did and who will have to live with an ever expanding sense of failure when it is not they who have failed because they have no confidence left and little joy in a world that treats them so severely. I won, at a cost and I will fight again because I am no longer a child and I know lies, manipulation and a rotten ethic when i see them now but by God I wonder when these people will be held accountable for making another generation grow up feeling that they are responsible for all the failure around them
Here we go again and it’s ALL our fault? Labour ill never again be thought to be merely standing aside from the suffering of those left behind. They are colluding and aiding the suffering and they will never make it back as any meaningful party.
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But how do they feel about taxing PIP, in short taking over a weeks money off disabled people? Bet they would gladly take £90+ every 4 weeks from the enhanced rates of the benefits while saying it was a Tory idea.
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Those Labour have deserted, deserted them and more will continue to do so if they see the party drift further away from them. I for one, despite a lifetime of family and ancestry support, Atos was a turning point for which I can only forgive them the one huge mistake.
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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