Labour's plans on welfare show it to be the real nasty party

The National

12 hours ago

I hope that's true of most across politics – even those who I might vehemently disagree with over how to go about tackling the issues. I really hope their motivations are in the right place, even if I think I might go about things differently.
I've found it much harder to reach this conclusion for those in parties like the Conservatives, aka 'The Nasty Party', which have consistently taken steps to make life harder for society's most vulnerable.
From the two-child benefit cap to their disdain for minorities, the Tories have never failed to make life worse at every opportunity for the people they're supposed to represent.
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When Robert Jenrick was immigration minister and ordered that colourful murals at an asylum centre for unaccompanied child migrants be painted over, he represented the very worst of a party and a political class which goes out of its way to be outright cruel to incredibly vulnerable children at a time of extraordinary distress.
It sickens me.
I wonder intensely then, what the motivations were for the hundreds of Labour MPs across the country who were elected last year and have done nothing since but continue the Tory legacy of cruelty and authoritarianism.
Did they get into politics just to vote to keep the two-child benefit cap – rape clause and all – within their first few weeks of power?
Did they get into politics just to strip vulnerable pensioners of their Winter Fuel Payments? Did they get into politics to trample the rights of trans people?
Maybe it was to make it even harder to exist day-to-day as a disabled person in this country? Or perhaps it was to proscribe non-violent activist groups that the government disagrees with as terrorist organisations? Did they get into politics to help enable the continued genocide of the Palestinian people?
The cynic in me knows that, for some of the more than 400 Labour MPs elected last July, their motivation will have been little more than proximity to power and a cushty salary.
To them, they'll just see it as any other job, and they won't care about the consequences of their actions on the people they are supposed to represent. For some, they were simply parachuted in to be yes men to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and presumably lack the capability for empathy to question if any of what they're doing might be wrong.
But I simply refuse to believe that is the case for the majority of them. I know that for so many Labour MPs, they'll have sought election because they genuinely wanted to improve people's lives. They'll have seen the harm of 14 years of Tory cruelty and austerity, and they will have wanted to change that.
So how on Earth can those MPs sleep at night now, a year on?
When it came to a vote on the two-child benefit cap, only seven then-Labour MPs voted against. Just nine Labour MPs voted against proscribing Palestine Action, and not a single one voted against the cuts to Winter Fuel Payments last year.
In each of these votes, a minority of Labour MPs took the coward's way out and abstained, but in each case several hundred Labour MPs voted in line with their right-wing government and voted for cruelty and authoritarianism.
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A number of these Labour MPs grew a spine more recently and took a stand against Starmer's brutal cuts to disability benefits – but clearly not used to the weight of having a backbone, the majority quickly bowed down and accepted measly concessions which do little more than kick the can down the road and create a two-tier system for disabled people who were approved for health-related benefits before versus after the changes will be implemented.
Just 49 Labour MPs voted against the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill last week at its second reading, and all eyes will be on their colleagues tomorrow when MPs vote after its final reading, before it goes to the House of Lords.
THE bill – even in its watered down state – would see Universal Credit payments slashed for disabled young people, blatantly discriminating on the basis of their age and disability.
It has been described as 'catastrophic' by grassroots disabled-led campaign Crips Against Cuts, and threatens to plunge a huge number of disabled people and their carers into poverty.
Some 126 Labour MPs signed a reasoned amendment essentially rebelling against the original version of the bill, including 12 Scottish Labour MPs, though notably they were not backed by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar who enthusiastically offered his support to his London-based bosses.
Although this was significant as the largest-scale rebellion since the General Election, and one that ultimately forced the Government into making concessions, this means nearly 300 Labour MPs – including a majority of Scottish Labour MPs – still backed the Government's appalling reforms all the way through. And a majority of the 126 rebels backed down after measly concessions which will still enact immense harm on an incredibly vulnerable community.
These Labour MPs, who I'd really like to believe stood for election to improve the lives of their constituents, have consistently chosen to continue the unwaveringly cruel legacy of the Tories, which enacts abject harm on some of the most vulnerable people in this country. And even when they've managed to pluck up the courage to rebel, they still buckled at the very first hurdle.
I don't know how they can look at themselves in the mirror. They talk of 'difficult choices' but it's always difficult choices for the working classes and never for the millionaires who continue to hoard immense wealth in this country. They have the full powers of a government with an overwhelming majority in an independent country, and this is how they choose to use them.
Simply put, the 'nasty party' is no longer the domain solely of the Tories. It's not even just shared between them and Reform. A year into government, this right-wing Labour Party is nasty through and through.