THERE is already widespread revulsion at the ferocity of the recent welfare cuts. However, the government seems intent on pressing ahead with them. There is also a strong possibility they are just a down payment on further cuts to come in the Spring Statement.

It is in the vital interests of the labour movement as whole to resist these cuts. The poor, disabled people and the sick are part of the working class, even if all of them are not currently in work. Every imposition on them is a disgrace, and has the potential to affect everyone in work, or seeking work.

The furious response to their proposed welfare cuts seemed to come as a shock to this government. But what did they expect? Perhaps emboldened by his popularity rising off its lows over the Ukraine issue, Keir Starmer has made it clear that he intends to plough on with his cuts.

This is a government populated by right-wing ideologues who have always wanted to attack the welfare state. At different times, and long before they held their current lofty positions, both Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall argued that Labour needed to be tougher than the Tories on welfare “reform,” more commonly known as cuts. Starmer is less an ideologue and more a political cushion who seems to bear the imprint of the last rightwinger that sat on him.

Despite much briefing in advance, designed to hoodwink the most gullible of my parliamentary colleagues, there was no U-turn on any aspect of the welfare cuts. Disabled people, the sick and the young are being deliberately targeted precisely because they are the most vulnerable and least able to mount co-ordinated resistance.

The claim that this is all a policy based on morality is simply stomach-churning.

In reality, the cuts are quite ferocious and the impact on individuals and households quite devastating. The government has been rather coy about the details of its cuts. But according to Resolution Foundation, if the government plans to save £5 billion from restricting personal independence payments (PIP) by making it harder to qualify for the daily living component, this would mean between 800,000 and 1.2 million people losing support of between £4,200 and £6,300 per year by 2029-30. Work capability assessments will also become more frequent and more onerous.

It is highly misleading for ministers to present these reforms as providing broader benefits, which are tiny. It is true that universal credit (UC) support for up to four million families without any health conditions or disability will rise by around £3 a week. But clearly, this is a pittance by comparison with the cuts elsewhere.

The government also presents further cuts as savings, to be achieved by cutting the level of the health-related Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) element within universal credit, which is currently claimed by 1.6 million people.  
Scandalously, these proposed cuts are focused on young people (aged 16-21), who may no longer be eligible for any extra support, and those who fall ill in the future, as their additional support will be halved, from £97 per week in 2024-25 to £50 per week in 2026-27.

This seems to be part of the wider war on young people which began in 2010 under David Cameron and George Osborne. Student loans, fake apprenticeships, precarious working and now benefits are a package, designed to prepare the next generation for much lower expectations from work, and much lower living standards.

The labour movement as a whole should stand with disabled people, the sick and young people about to enter the workforce. The old trade union cry of “an injury to one is an injury to all,” is highly appropriate in this context. It is extremely important to offer basic solidarity. It is also in the vital interests of us all to defend the groups being picked off. 

Forcing people into inappropriate work is a mechanism to divide us, and to lower pay and conditions for all. It simultaneously increases the numbers of workers in low-paid and precarious work, while raising the numbers of employers who ignore the national minimum wage and other protections.

Starmer has made a lot of inappropriate noise about Labour being the party of those in work, as if it is any part of working-class culture to throw those not in work to the wolves. That is the ideology of an entirely different class.

That is why unease, revulsion and anger in the Labour Party over these measures stretches far beyond the somewhat diminished ranks of the Labour left. In fact, it stretches way into the centre and even beyond.

The various groupings in Labour (Labour Together, Blue Labour, red wall Labour and possibly more) who want to blame all society’s ills and Labour’s very poor polling on immigration have had the ground cut from under them at a stroke. It is not migrants who are cutting your universal credit, and it is not asylum-seekers who will make you do work capability assessments until you drop. Shamefully, it is a Labour government.

On the progressive side, there are widespread reports of Labour councillors leaving the party in droves. With local elections looming May, many will not want to be associated with these policies, certainly not after the damage that was done to Labour’s standing with the cut to the winter fuel allowance. 

We will see what the Spring Statement brings. It is unlikely to be good news.

I wrote in these pages shortly after the October Budget last year that it was a return to austerity. It is highly regrettable that I felt like a lone voice at the time. But it was plain then that any Budget which simultaneously reduced the growth in departmental budgets, introduced stealth income taxes and announced welfare cuts was clearly renewed austerity. 

The lack of opposition to those planned cuts, and the free pass given to this Labour leadership has clearly emboldened them. £3.9bn in welfare cuts was threatened in October. This has now become at least £5bn, with more pencilled in.

But now the widespread anger in the Labour Party is reflected publicly in parts of the trade union movement. That needs to become broader still. We need to force them to make a different choice, to make banks, big business and the rich pay for their own crisis, not those on benefits.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.