Labour austerity will cost us dearly at the ballot box

Government front bench (Credit: House of Commons)

Diane Abbott MP

@HackneyAbbott

One reason it would have been difficult to foresee this is because of how unpopular it would be with the Labour base. But Starmer has pushed ahead regardless. On 19 March, I raised the issue with him in Prime Minister’s Questions. In particular, I spoke about his argument that the £5bn cuts in disability payments is the “moral” choice. This is obviously nonsense. In what universe is slashing benefits for the disabled moral? Nobody is taken in by that. Not even those people who think that all benefit claimants are “scroungers” who should be forced back to work are taken in by the “morality” argument.

Labour’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems determined to turn herself into George Osborne mark II

Apart from the fact that his cuts are the wrong thing to do, his case has been harmed by these disingenuous arguments. On the one hand ministers insist they are doing the disabled a favour by putting them back to work, and on the other that this will save as much as £6bn. But both cannot be done. Putting disabled people into rewarding, sustained employment costs money (eg training, therapy, childcare costs), meaning that in the short run putting them into jobs will not save money but could actually cost more than keeping them on benefits. The only certain way the welfare “reforms” could save the billions that ministers want is by making benefit claimants live on less. 

These billion-pound cuts in disability benefits come on top of a whole series of political acts that would seem contrary to what the Labour Party stands for, including the cuts in the winter fuel allowance for the elderly. You wonder whether it occurs to the Labour leadership that voters will begin to notice that whenever they want money, they take it from the most vulnerable – old people, poor children and now the disabled. 

Suggest a wealth tax to the leadership and they recoil in horror. They claim that these cuts in welfare are inescapable because the money for the NHS must come from somewhere. But the money could come from the tax system. Politics is the language of choices – and the leadership is choosing to take the money from the disabled. 

Labour has spent years campaigning against austerity and the savage cuts it involved. Public sector organisations like the NHS are only just recovering from the damage inflicted by George Osborne and his cuts. But Labour’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems determined to turn herself into George Osborne mark II. Reeves’ problem seems to be that she knows enough about economics to sound authoritative, but not enough to do anything except cleave religiously to the economic orthodoxy. 

The Labour Party will pay a political price for this return to austerity, because this is not what people voted for last summer. It will begin to be apparent in forthcoming elections. There is a parliamentary by-election coming along, and council elections soon. At best, people who have always voted Labour will stay at home. At worst, they will vote for another party. In some areas, that will be Green or Independent; in others, Reform. But the motivation will be the same. A Labour Party that takes money off disabled people is not the party they and their parents voted for. 

We have seen the rise of the far right in western Europe and the horrors of Donald Trump in North America, so we desperately need Britain’s Labour Party to succeed. But if we disillusion Labour voters by not standing up for our principles and returning to austerity, which voters detested, we leave the door open to the far right. Starmer and his advisers like Morgan McSweeney need to turn back from the path that they have set the party on, and say an emphatic no to austerity. 

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

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