Keir Starmer’s Labour Party government has chosen to push hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, while gifting billions of pounds to the arms industry. Its decision has sparked massive protests, and even mainstream media critiques. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has produced an impact assessment on its disability benefit cuts that suggests a rise in poverty for 250,000 people, though official figures suggest it’s actually more like 400,000 people. And it’s been hard for the media to ignore such a massive impact.
Are Labour MPs and voters happy “to make poor people poorer”?
Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy, for example, asked a Labour MP:
Did you come into politics to make poor people poorer?
He added:
How on earth is a Labour government doing things that create 250,000 people in relative poverty, 50,000 of whom are children? A Labour government making children in poverty.
The MP answered that “tackling child poverty is a priority”, to which Guru-Murthy replied:
Not a very high priority
Krishnan Guru-Murthy, "Did you come into politics to make poor people poorer?"
Labour's Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, "I came into politics to put more money into people's pockets"
KGM, "How on earth is a Labour government doing things that puts 250,000 people in… pic.twitter.com/8sGPvcDqyh
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) March 26, 2025
Sky News, meanwhile, highlighted how Labour was putting hundreds of thousands of:
extra people in poverty that weren’t potentially going there before
It also asked another Labour MP:
How many Labour MPs went into politics to see 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, pushed into relative poverty?
And:
How many Labour voters do you think voted for 50,000… more children to be pushed into relative poverty?
The government’s strategy, however, seems to be to try and spin their way out of answering those questions.
Labour has “gone further than even the Tories ever dared”
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told BBC Newsnight:
A lot of people that voted Labour in the election are absolutely furious. They didn’t elect a Labour government to find, a few months later, they’re taking a knife to the welfare bill and leaving so many people in such desperate poverty… It’s utterly disgraceful.
https://x.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1905168702334451907
Corbyn also took to LBC to criticise the government for “deliberately impoverishing extremely vulnerable people”:
‘We’re deliberately impoverishing extremely vulnerable people.’@JeremyCorbyn says he ‘cannot understand the mentality’ behind the government’s changes to benefits. pic.twitter.com/JKpDSF5yhP
— LBC (@LBC) March 26, 2025
And a statement together with his colleagues from the Independent Alliance said:
The government has not just refused to undo the suffering the Tories have inflicted. They have gone further than even the Tories ever dared.
It added:
Austerity is not a tough choice. It’s the wrong choice.
“Bigger than Tory austerity”
Channel 4 also interviewed Katy Schmuecker from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which has said “living standards for the poorest [are] under continuing assault” under Labour. And she said chancellor Rachel Reeves had:
set out the biggest package of disability benefit cuts that we have seen since the Office for Budget Responsibility’s records began back in 2010
Presenter Cathy Newman asked if it was “bigger than Tory austerity”, to which Schmuecker replied:
For disability benefits specifically, yes.
While the consequences of government proposals for ‘helping people get work’ are uncertain, Schmuecker said:
What we can be certain about is that cuts of that scale to disability benefits are going to deepen poverty.
She also pointed out that the number of people going into poverty could be much higher than the figures the government has shared, at around 400,000 (“and between 50 and 100,000 of them children”).
Cathy Newman, "The Chancellor's Spring Statement and the government's own assessment of it, which says welfare cuts will leave an estimated 250,000 more people, including 50,000 children in relative poverty by end of the decade"
Katy Schmuecker, "The Chancellor said she wouldn't… pic.twitter.com/nn3DYJFURw
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) March 26, 2025
So, when even some of the corporate media are gunning for Labour – you know it must be bad.
Featured image via the Canary
