After weeks of trailing the threat of welfare cuts in the press, Keir Starmer’s government has announced the details of its plans to slash benefits. The major headline cut is the restriction of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – money that helps disabled people improve their quality of life by providing support with mobility or everyday tasks they may struggle with, such as washing or dressing.

Like much of the welfare system after 15 years of austerity, the program is already defined by a lengthy, convoluted application process of calculated debasement. Seventy percent of rejected claims are won on appeal, which suggests that there are strong incentives in place for assessors to automatically reject people.

But this has been considered too generous by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, who has tightened the criteria even further, potentially knocking over a million people off the scheme and reducing their incomes by thousands of pounds a year. 

So why is Labour doing this? Cabinet ministers have spoken at length about the £5bn in savings their reforms will bring to the exchequer, in order to meet chancellor Rachel Reeves’ self-imposed fiscal rules on borrowing. But that’s not the only impetus. The government is also pushing a “moral case” for welfare reform, insisting that the number of people out of work is simply too high. 

The trouble is that the problems the government has identified, accurately or otherwise, are barely connected to the solutions it’s offering. The Tories already removed all the supposed ‘incentives’ to stay on benefits by turning life as a sick person into a horrorshow of poverty and Kafkaesque bureaucracy – so just how many skivers does the government believe are left? 

Taking money from the disabled and those on the lowest incomes will not help with the Chancellor’s plans for growth. Are we really expected to believe that ministers have looked at the UK economy in 2025 and concluded that the most pressing problem is that disabled people simply have it too good?

This question is not just frustrating the left but challenging Starmer’s core constituency of turbo-centrist media types. On Bluesky, commentator Sam Freedman responded to a Starmer aide who said “if people are better off and able to see a doctor then we will go a long way to winning the next election”, calling it “an entirely reasonable sentence that once more is completely incompatible with slashing PIP”. This isn’t sniping from the Corbynite left – Labour’s policies are so bafflingly obtuse that it’s losing people who listen to The News Agents voluntarily.

We could say “this is just what the government wants to do” – after all, Rachel Reeves has been telling people that in her view, Labour is “not the party of people on benefits” since 2015. But, while undoubtedly true, this just moves the question back a step. Why is this what Starmer’s Labour wants? Why is it that despite Reeves’ claims to be driven by commitments to growth and stability, everything is just reheated austerity – a mix of vacuity and viciousness that nobody likes, or even thinks will work?

But maybe trying to figure out a rational explanation is a hiding to nothing, simply because there isn’t one. 

While George Osborne and David Cameron might well have pushed the idea that “the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton”, it’s arguable that they didn’t really believe it. Osborne’s commitment to slash-and-burn economics never wavered for a second when the supposed academic underpinnings were shown to be mistaken. The destruction of the state was the point.

Austerity was a monstrous scam – a stitch up between the ruling elite and the media and think tank class to sell a decade of outright fraud and disaster capitalism as a sober but necessary correction from the excesses of Tony Blair. It was appalling and evil – but at least enough of them knew it was all a racket. 

Reeves and Starmer are altogether different beasts. They’re true believers. The economy really doesn’t want those libraries in Wolverhampton!

It’s as if the economy is an angry volcano god that demands constant ritual sacrifices of poor and disabled people. Past rulers might have made up those stories so as to avoid hard questions such as “why do you get to have the big gold hat while I have to muck out this goat shed?” but we’re now at the stage where the people in charge really, truly believe that the volcano won’t erupt if we just throw enough people into it. 

And, unfortunately, their response to the volcano’s stubborn insistence on erupting despite the rain of bodies is “more human sacrifice! The economy is still mad at us!” 

Reeves seems to believe her powerful invocations of “growth, growth, growth” aren’t stirring the economy god into action because poor and disabled people are blocking its ears. “You’re not working hard enough! You’re not putting in enough effort! If you were, this would be working! It can’t be because my ideas are trash! Into the volcano with you!”

There are parallels here with what’s going on in the US regarding Elon Musk. Myths about the deep state are a great way for libertarian bullshitters to get ordinary people to go along with their own brand of slash-and-burn antisocial politicking. But one of the people successfully conned into believing it turned out to be a billionaire who has now managed to get himself into a position where he can go on a chainsaw rampage through the structures of the federal government, literally looking for the secret cabal of communists who run everything.

The people in charge aren’t supposed to believe the horseshit they sell to the rest of us. The fraudsters at least have the sense to know when they’re pushing things too far and to tap the brakes a little. When we’re being led by true believers, they lack any such sense of perspective. And that’s when things get really scary.