Burnham slammed for red-Tory attack on young disabled people

Andy Burnham, who promised ‘change’ when he was anointed as new PM in the summer, has yet again shown that he represents more of the same as the UK was force-fed under the Starmer government.

Burnham has continued and even intensified Starmer’s war on UK citizens’ speech and protest rights. He has continued and even intensified Britain’s collaboration in illegal US and Israeli war. He has continued and even extended the massive contracts handed to toxic US spyware firm Palantir. And he is continuing the Starmer regime’s ideological war on disabled people – now with a decision to bar disabled people aged 16-24 from claiming ‘PIP’, the ‘Personal Independence Payment’ that is supposed to help disabled people with the extra costs of living that they inevitably face.

More of the red-Tory same

The plan is entirely unsurprising, considering Burnham put red-Tory Blairite health-profiteer Alan Milburn in charge of devising it. Milburn said he’s happy to impose financial pain on young disabled people, because supposedly this somehow magically improves their “longer-term life chances”:

Candidly, it could mean that some people will get less financial support at the beginning of their benefit claim than under the current system. But actually, for young people, there’s a different debate that we’ve got to resolve, which is whether the priority is their longer-term life chances or just their immediate shorter-term finances.

I think what the current system does [is] it prioritises the latter over the former. I believe that’s the wrong choice and it needs to be the other way around.

This represents an utter disregard for, and ignorance of, the realities facing disabled people of any age. And Burnham is rightly being slammed for this disgusting decision, as a post by Liverpool activist Jean Poet encapsulates.

She asks whether the eugenicist approach of Burnham’s regime intends just to let disabled people starve to death for being unable to work. It’s a rhetorical question, of course – because the neoliberalism Burnham serves no less slavishly than Starmer did has no interest in keeping (to use the phrase the eugenicist nazis coined) ‘useless eaters’ alive:

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The UK’s benefits are among the lowest in Europe, yet while the UK government can always find billions for war the pittance it hands to the vulnerable is always somehow ‘unsustainable’. And the claim that this is about pushing disabled people into work is a flat lie – there are literally single figures of suitable jobs available even on the website of Burnham’s DWP:

The similarity of neoliberal eugenics to the policies of the nazi party was not lost on observers:

Social media platforms, as ever, are doing their best to suppress criticism of the attacks:

Many are pointing out the devastating impact on young disabled people and the conscious cruelty of what Burnham plans to impose on them – and how it has absolutely nothing to do with improving their “longer-term life chances”:

Others pointed out how government sees disabled people as an easy scapegoat – and mistreating them as a way of scaring the rest of the population into line – and forcing them into poverty-paying jobs that make profit for capital:

And when the Burnham axis has finished targeting disabled people, others will be in the crosshairs next:

These attacks are not needed, or even helpful. They are ideological, carried out by those with no respect for life if it does not generate profit:

And, as always, the attacks are conducted on behalf of the obscenely rich, by politicians they fund, own and operate – while too many Britons are still far too ready to bend over and take it, as long as there’s a handy scapegoat to blame instead:

Burnham’s handlers are the same monstrous drones that managed Starmer on behalf of billionaires and colonisers. If anything, he is worse than Starmer – because he has a personality and can fool people for longer. Resistance and noise about what he is actually doing are essential.