The Cruel Hand of the Red Tories: Labour’s Betrayal of Britain’s Most Vulnerable

Have we truly learned nothing from the deaths of thousands?

When Labour swept to power seven months ago, many disabled people allowed themselves a fragile hope. After fourteen years of Conservative brutality that saw the disabled community systematically attacked, degraded, and – let us not mince words – killed through callous policy, surely a Labour government would restore humanity to our welfare system?

How swiftly that hope has evaporated. The leaked documents from the Department for Work and Pensions revealing plans for £6 billion worth of benefit cuts expose Labour’s true colours: Red Tories in all but name, continuing the grim legacy of their predecessors with barely a pause for breath.

History Repeating Itself

Let us not forget the devastating toll of the last round of “welfare reforms.” Between 2011 and 2014, according to the DWP’s own data, 2,380 people died shortly after being declared “fit for work” – nearly 90 souls per month perishing after a bureaucrat with a clipboard decided their suffering wasn’t quite sufficient to warrant support. Researchers would later attribute over 300,000 “excess deaths” to Conservative austerity measures.

Dr. David Walsh’s words still haunt: “These figures are not only shocking but shameful… they represent hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been cut short, and hundreds of thousands of families who have had to deal with the grief and aftermath of those deaths.”

Yet here we stand in 2025, with Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves seemingly determined to add their own grim statistics to this shameful record.

The New Assault Begins

The proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) eligibility come despite the fact that the system is already brutally restrictive. Last year alone, the DWP rejected over 330,000 PIP claims. One might reasonably ask: just how much harder does Labour wish to make it for someone with chronic illness or disability to access the meagre support they need simply to survive?

The Independent also revealed that 1,300 people had died before receiving their PIP claim decision from the DWP. According to data from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, PIP applicants faced an average wait of almost four months to have their claims processed. One man, 40, from Northern Ireland, first applied for PIP in June 2022 and is still waiting for the benefit decision. The man, who had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome caused by an underactive thyroid, was told by a tribunal in August 2024 that his claim would be reassessed after having it initially rejected – although he is still waiting.

Meanwhile, PIP payments are set to be cut in real terms next year by freezing them so they do not rise in line with inflation. This isn’t fiscal prudence – it’s punishing people for the crime of being disabled in a country that increasingly sees their existence as an inconvenient budgetary line item.

There are also changes to Universal Credit, which is paid to both people both in work and out. The basic rate of Universal Credit – which is between £311.68 and £617.60 a month – is set to be increased, but only for those searching for work or in work. People who have been judged unfit for work through a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) will have their payments cut. This is tantamount punishment for being disabled…

The Mask Slips

Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, claims these changes will help fix the “broken” welfare system and get more people into work. This rhetoric is identical to that used by her Conservative predecessors. The implication is clear: disabled people are workshy scroungers who need to be forced off benefits and into employment, regardless of whether their conditions make that possible or even safe.

It bears repeating that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit. It can be claimed by people who are working, and exists solely to help with the additional costs that disability invariably brings. Cutting it will not magically create jobs suitable for people with serious health conditions – it will simply make their lives more desperate.

The United Nations Condemns

Even the United Nations has been forced to intervene, with the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights explicitly stating that the UK government is infringing human rights with its poverty crisis. They urged the reversal of brutal policies like the two-child benefit cap and the five-week wait for Universal Credit.

Their response was telling: the UK government’s welfare reforms have resulted in “severe economic hardship, increased reliance on food banks, homelessness, negative impacts on mental health and the stigmatisation of benefit claimants.”

Yet Labour refuses to lift the two-child benefit cap, despite their own opposition to it when the Conservatives implemented it. The same Labour government that attacked pensioners by removing winter fuel allowance without even conducting an impact assessment – though when in opposition, they claimed this exact policy would result in 4,000 excess deaths.

Ministers were also urged to address the root causes of homelessness by giving local authorities adequate funding, guaranteeing safe living conditions in temporary accommodation and prioritising long-term solutions.

Meanwhile, the “punitive approach against rough sleeping” was also criticised with the 200-year-old Vagrancy Act continuing to criminalise sleeping rough in England.

The UN also said the UK government must “enhance” efforts to decarbonise residential homes to meet its climate change targets.

Ministers should ensure safe, health and adequate living conditions for migrants and asylum seekers in temporary accommodation and scrap the no recourse to public funds policy that leaves asylum seekers unable to access state support.

Labour should also look by implementing targeted public sector employment schemes, enhancing vocational training and employment services to boost employment among vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities, young people and ethnic minorities.

Concerns were also raised that the minimum wage has not kept pace with the rising cost of living.

The UN also recommended addressing the “multidimensional determinants of poverty” by setting out “clear, measurable targets” to eradicate poverty for good.

The Big Issue’s Poverty Zero campaign has been calling on the government to bring in a law to set out poverty reduction targets alongside measures to hold politicians legally accountable for commitments to tackle the issue.

Lord John Bird, Big Issue founder and crossbench peer, said: “This UN report is another indication that the government must take poverty seriously. Joined up thinking is what’s called for.

“Our children and their families are suffering. The long-term consequences of inaction will be catastrophic both for their wellbeing and for our overburdened welfare state and public institutions like the NHS – crumbling pillars of our society which this government have promised the electorate they’ll fix.

“No teacher, no doctor, no prison or police officer is trained to get rid of poverty, but it is our public services who are in the poverty firing line. And it’s an unhappy truth that they’re only capable of responding to poverty’s toxic outcomes, rather than helping people escape it.”

From Hope to Despair

James Taylor of disability equality charity Scope put it plainly: “Ripping PIP away will be catastrophic for disabled people. PIP exists because life costs more if you are disabled. Those costs won’t disappear if the Government squeezes eligibility.”

Laura Thomas of the MS Society echoed these fears: “People with MS have told us they’ve been filled with worry in recent weeks about what these changes could mean for them. MS can be debilitating, exhausting and unpredictable.”

The cruel irony is that many disabled people actually voted for Labour precisely to escape the torment of Tory welfare policies. Their reward? The same medicine in a different bottle.

The Verdict

In a society as wealthy as the UK, “poverty is a political choice,” as the UN rightly observes. Labour has made that choice, just as the Conservatives did before them. They have chosen to balance the books on the backs of the most vulnerable citizens, knowing full well the human cost of such policies.

The question now facing us is stark: how many more disabled people must die before we recognize that this approach is not just economically unnecessary but morally bankrupt? How many more families must grieve before we demand a welfare system that treats disability with dignity rather than suspicion?

What bitter irony that those who limped to polling stations, despite pain and fatigue, to vote Labour and escape Tory torment now find themselves under assault from the very saviors they thought would protect them. Perhaps the most devastating truth is this: when given the chance to break with fourteen years of deliberate cruelty, Labour chose instead to

Welcome to Tory Britain indeed – where the only thing that changes is the Party name on the letterhead informing you that your support has been cut.

Paul Knaggs