Labour’s lowest betrayal yet: exploiting vulnerable youngsters to profit big business
Share this post:
I’m having deja vu.
According to the BBC,
“Young people will be stripped of their right to claim benefits if they refuse a taxpayer-funded job after 18 months without a job, the work and pensions secretary says.
“Pat McFadden told the BBC they would need a “good reason” to decline one of the 55,000 six-month placements, to be rolled out from next April.
“The government has announced the roles could span areas including construction and hospitality – although companies taking part are yet to be confirmed.
An honest future-direction message
“Vox Political is nearing the end of its fourteenth year, and I want to be honest with you: the online advertising model that kept the site free to read has deteriorated so sharply that it can no longer sustain the work.
This is not a reflection on the readership; it is a structural shift affecting small publishers everywhere.
Rather than quietly winding down, I’m giving you clear notice: Vox Political will close at the end of the year unless something dramatically changes. The good news is that The Whip Line already exists, is reader-funded, and is growing. That is where I can continue producing the journalism you value, free from the chaos of advertiser algorithms.
If you want the work to continue, please join me there. Free and paid subscriptions are available, but please remember it is the paid subscriptions – monthly and annual – that directly fund the reporting.”
“The placements will begin to be rolled out in six parts of the UK with high youth unemployment from spring 2026, it has been confirmed, following the initial announcement of the scheme in September.
“The six-month roles will be “fully subsidised” for 25 hours a week, paid at the legal minimum wage from an £820m pot announced at the Budget, allocated until 2029, which will also fund training and work support.
“The placements will be offered to 18- to-21-year-olds on universal credit who have been looking for work for 18 months.
“In total, the government plans to create 350,000 training and work experience placements.
“McFadden added: “This is an offer on one hand, but it’s an expectation on the other. Because the future we don’t want for young people is to be sitting at home on benefits, when there are other options out there.”
“McFadden’s Conservative counterpart Helen Whately said… “This scheme is nothing more than taking with one hand to give with the other.”
The Conservatives introduced very similar schemes between 2010–2024, and their criticism now is largely political theatre rather than a principled objection.
Back when they were in government, the Tories ran a series of workfare-style and sanction-linked schemes that worked on exactly the same principle:
They included the Work Programme, Youth Contract, Mandatory Work Activity, and later versions of Sector-based Work Academies. All of these tied benefits to “offers” of work, training or placements, with sanctions if claimants refused without what the department called a “good reason”.
The logic was always the same as Labour’s current line:
– “We’re helping young people”
– “We’re giving them experience”
– “It’s an offer, but there’s an expectation.”
That last phrase could have been lifted straight from an ex-Conservative minister’s briefing note.
So why are the Tories now attacking Labour for doing something so similar?
It’s because they’ve shifted the argument. When they were in power, they framed this approach as “being tough but fair.”
Now they frame Labour’s version as “too expensive” and “not creating real jobs.”
That’s not a moral objection to coercion or sanctions. It’s a political repositioning: they want to attack Labour on economic management, not defend their own record.
The uncomfortable truth for them is this: Labour’s scheme looks like a softened, rebranded version of Conservative-era welfare conditionality.
The big difference isn’t the concept – it’s the packaging and the scale of subsidy.
So when Helen Whately says Labour has “no plan to create real jobs”, what she’s really doing is trying to pretend the Conservatives didn’t do the same thing, repeatedly, for 14 years.
This is a recycled model, with a new logo.
The other aspect is that these placements never worked – for those who were put on them.
They made money for participating businesses because they profited from the work without dipping into their own payrolls.
The evidence from the 2010–24 Conservative-era schemes showed three consistent problems.
First, they were poor at creating lasting jobs.
Internal DWP assessments and later independent evaluations found that a large number of placements did not lead to permanent employment. People rotated through short-term, low-wage roles and were often back on benefits shortly afterwards.
That’s not a credible “route into work” – it’s churn.
Second, they acted as a wage subsidy for employers.
Businesses got workers whose wages were paid by the state. That let them fill shifts, cover vacancies, or expand output without increasing their own payroll costs. In real terms, the taxpayer was underwriting labour while private firms pocketed the profit.
That’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s basic economics. If a business is getting labour it doesn’t have to finance itself, its costs fall and its margins improve.
Third, they distorted the labour market.
Instead of encouraging firms to invest in training or raise wages to attract staff, the schemes gave them a revolving door of state-backed workers. That undercut real job creation and depressed wages, especially in hospitality, retail and care.
The result was that claimants were pressured into placements with little long-term benefit, while employers learned they could rely on subsidised labour rather than create proper jobs.
So when this new scheme is marketed as “help”, the uncomfortable reality is:
– similar schemes failed before,
– they benefited employers more than young people, and
– they did not reduce youth unemployment in a lasting way.
This isn’t “help into work”. It’s social policy being bent to subsidise private business via the welfare system.
So a Labour government is plotting to exploit vulnerable young people for the benefit of big businesses.
Pat McFadden might as well be Iain Duncan Smith and the Labour Party might as well change its name to “New Conservatives”
Share this post:
We need a national fibromyalgia care pathway – why is the NHS dragging its feet?
Share this post:
The National Health Service is failing people with fibromyalgia, with no clear system for diagnosing or treating the condition – despite revealing research.
The BBC has detailed the problems:
“People suffering from the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia are being failed by the NHS, according to new research which found patients were waiting years for diagnosis, undergoing unnecessary tests and being prescribed harmful drugs.
“Researchers at Aberdeen University said some doctors were even refusing to refer patients and dismissing them as “lazy”.
“Fibromyalgia causes pain all over the body and can bring on severe fatigue.
“Some estimates suggest one in 20 people may have the condition… There is no cure.
“It is not clear why some people develop fibromyalgia. The exact cause is unknown.
“Adele ended up paying to go private and finally got her diagnosis. She said: “The diagnosis was a relief but since then it’s been a case of there is no care pathway. You are told it’s definitely fibromyalgia you have – here are some pain killers.”
The way forward is already visible in the evidence – but, as ever with the UK’s health systems, what’s missing is the political will, clinical consistency and service design to act on it.
Please take a moment to complete the Vox Political Reader Survey.
Your answers are anonymous and will help shape future coverage.
Click here to take part.
Fibromyalgia has been stuck in a tragic holding pattern for decades: doctors don’t understand it, therefore they don’t diagnose it, therefore patients look “complex” or “non-compliant”, therefore doctors continue not to understand it.
This loop has harmed hundreds of thousands of people across the United Kingdom and placed enormous, unnecessary strain on carers – including me, in the 17 years I cared for someone with the condition.
But research cited in the BBC piece – yes, you need to go and read it – together with parallel work done over the last few years in pain science and primary-care modelling – points toward a route out of the mess. It’s not easy, but it is straightforward.
Here’s the practical, evidence-led path forward that the NHS could adopt now:
1. Standardised, early diagnosis as the default – not the exception
The Aberdeen team’s findings confirm what patients have said for decades: diagnosis is slow, inconsistent and heavily dependent on whether a clinician believes in the illness. That is untenable.
A national diagnostic protocol – mandated for all primary-care settings – would:
- end the “revolving door” of pointless tests
- stop patients being bounced between specialties
- give GPs confidence that they are following an accepted standard
The research already shows the criteria that work. There is no scientific justification for every clinician reinventing the wheel.
2. Replace the drug-first model with an evidence-based support-first model
MacFarlane’s team found patients overwhelmingly want personalised, non-drug support.
The literature backs that up: symptom-management education, pacing strategies, gentle progressive movement, sleep interventions and psychological support for coping all show greater long-term benefit than escalating painkillers.
The current system is backwards: patients are sent home with drugs that barely work and can cause harm, while the interventions that actually improve quality of life are either unavailable or left to charities.
A proper NHS fibro pathway would include:
- a short, structured education programme on the condition
- access to physio or occupational-therapy-led pacing and energy-management support
- brief psychological support (not to “fix” the illness, but to help cope with its unpredictability)
- diet, sleep and lifestyle guidance tailored to fibro’s known triggers
- peer support options (which have strong evidence for reducing isolation and improving self-management)
This is all cheap, scalable and already proven effective.
3. Multi-disciplinary fibro clinics – even virtual ones – to stop the ping-pong referrals
Patients are currently shunted between rheumatology, gastroenterology, neurology and pain services because nobody “owns” the condition.
The answer isn’t to expand referrals but to collate them: small teams with a rheumatologist or pain specialist, a physio, an OT and a psychology practitioner offering assessment and early-stage support.
This doesn’t require large new buildings; the evidence shows virtual clinics work very well for fibro because continuity, not geography, is what matters.
This change alone would save money: it stops duplicate tests, consultant time and unnecessary drug trials.
4. Mandatory education for clinicians
There is no future for fibro care while clinicians can simply choose not to believe in it.
Training based on pain neuroscience, central sensitisation research, and the lived experience of patients should be standard in GP training, physio training, and for consultant physicians in high-referral specialties.
Crucially, this must include challenging the outdated stigma – the “lazy”, “anxious”, “attention-seeking” stereotypes that MacFarlane’s study exposes.
These attitudes are not just unprofessional; they cause demonstrable clinical harm.
5. Carer involvement and support
My experience is typical: fibromyalgia affects whole households. Any real care pathway must formally include carers, with:
- education for carers about pacing, flare management, cognitive symptoms
- mental-health support and respite access (believe me – this is vital)
- involvement in care-planning conversations
At the moment, carers absorb the system’s failures for free. It is both inequitable and unsustainable.
6. Public-health recognition
Fibromyalgia is common – perhaps one in 20 people, as the BBC article notes – but is treated as if it is rare or marginal.
A national awareness campaign that normalises early help-seeking and reduces stigma would dramatically reduce diagnostic delay.
7. A policy shift: chronic pain as a cross-government priority
Fibromyalgia doesn’t just sit in health; it affects employment, social care, DWP assessments, public transport and mental health.
A joined-up chronic-pain strategy could:
- stop DWP assessors treating fibro as “psychosomatic”
- require employers to recognise fluctuating conditions
- integrate occupational-health support into fibro care plans
This is where political will matters most, because the failures are systemic.
What’s stopping progress?
The barrier is a mixture of:
- institutional scepticism rooted in outdated medical culture
- lack of ownership within the NHS (no specialty wants to “own” fibro)
- political reluctance to commit resources to conditions that don’t kill but do make life hell
Yet, as the Aberdeen study shows, the cost of doing nothing is higher: years of tests, inappropriate interventions, and the enormous personal cost to patients and carers.
So the answer is: a national fibromyalgia care pathway – fully funded, standardised, and designed with contributions from patients
It exists in fragments already. Scotland, Wales and some English regions have piloted versions. But what is needed is the UK-wide political decision that fibromyalgia is real, common, and deserves structured care, not dismissal.
That – combined with mandatory clinician education and a shift away from drug-first care – would end decades of neglect.
It wouldn’t cure fibromyalgia.
But it would stop the NHS worsening it.
Share this post:
Labour launches plan to tackle child poverty – that will only limit it and WON’T end it
Share this post:
“Labour launches long-awaited child poverty strategy” trumpeted the ticker-tape on the BBC News channel – but all the coverage seemed… well, piecemeal.
The report on the BBC News website concentrated on just one aspect, with mention of a few others, and the Guardian ran a “live blog”, which is a “bitty” way of reporting – you get small fragments.
Fortunately, that same blog published a link to the full, 116-page strategy – so I got hold of it, read it… and this is what I found:
Reporting of it is piecemeal because the strategy itself is piecemeal.
What the government has produced is more substantial than anything any administration has offered for more than a decade – but it still falls well short of a genuinely comprehensive anti-poverty strategy.
It pulls together a set of policies that were mostly announced already, and that gives the impression of coherence, but coherence is not the same as being complete or capable of solving the crisis at hand.
And how can this be a strategy to eliminate child poverty when it promises to lift only 550,000 out of poverty and leaves nearly four million to struggle?
To read the full analysis, head over to The Whip Line.
A subscription unlocks all my analysis and helps keep independent UK political journalism going.
Share this post:
First the data, now the deportations: Labour cracks down on foreign delivery riders
Share this post:
If you’re happy that “illegal workers” are set to be deported after a crackdown on delivery firms, think again.
It means the Labour government engineered conditions to make asylum-seekers desperate, then criminalised them for acting out of that desperation.
The result has provided a handy headline with which to distract us from the fact that the government has no coherent immigration and asylum policy whatsoever.
Here’s the BBC with the latest development:
Please take a moment to complete the Vox Political Reader Survey.
Your answers are anonymous and will help shape future coverage.
Click here to take part.
“The government says 60 takeaway-delivery riders found to be working illegally in the UK are facing deportation.
“The Home Office says the group are among 171 riders arrested over seven days in November in a national “enforcement blitz” in villages, towns and cities across the country.
“Border Security Minister Alex Norris has also met representatives from food-delivery firms to encourage them to do more to tackle the issue – such as using facial recognition checks to prevent riders sharing their identities with people who do not have permission to take up work in the UK.
“The Home Office says it has recently been sharing the locations of asylum hotels with food delivery companies so they can “monitor hotspots for illegal working”.
“Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats say they have increased randomised facial checks to ensure riders match their account names.”
Don’t get me wrong – illegal work by people who have come here from other countries and are not allowed to take employment here is a crime and should be punished.
But it is likely that these people feel forced into it because they have been trapped in limbo for much longer than they could ever have expected, due to a failed UK government system that has been starved of the resources it needs for more than a decade.
I wrote in July: “Banning work for asylum seekers, cramming people into hotels, and then watching them struggle to survive — it’s a vicious cycle.
“Labour is outsourcing enforcement to tech companies, instead of tackling the root causes of the UK’s migration and asylum challenges.
“The government is turning asylum seekers into suspects, and delivery drivers into potential informants – all of it cloaked in the language of “loopholes” and “illegal working.”
“It really amounts to a corporate-backed surveillance dragnet — one that disproportionately targets the people Labour once claimed to stand for: the vulnerable, the displaced, and the working class.”
A system designed that way will always produce “offenders”, because it gives people no lawful route to survival.
Now Labour is using the inevitable result as evidence that its approach is “working”.
My warning that the government was turning asylum seekers into suspects, and delivery drivers into informants, has now played out in full view.
The “enforcement blitz” described by the BBC is exactly the kind of dragnet I predicted: one driven by app-based monitoring, identity checks, and pressure on gig-economy platforms to police vulnerable people on the state’s behalf.
Labour calls this “tightening the law”, but it’s really a widening of suspicion.
The party still has no coherent immigration or asylum strategy — no plan to clear the backlog, no plan for safe routes, no plan for accommodation, no plan for integration — so it falls back on public displays of toughness to mask its own failure.
When you create a system that produces desperation and then criminalises people for responding to it, the problem is not the people – it’s the system itself.
But what else can we expect from Keir Starmer’s Labour? It is an administration that governs not by policy… but by headlines.
Share this post:
Energy customers are hit AGAIN by extra costs as grid is upgraded
Share this post:
Household energy bills are to rise – AGAIN – in order to fund investment in the transmission network. Wasn’t this work supposed to drive bills down?
Here’s the BBC:
“Household energy bills will rise to help fund a £28bn investment in the UK’s energy network.
“Energy regulator Ofgem has approved the funding in a five-year plan to improve electricity and gas grids. The money will go towards maintaining gas networks and strengthening the electricity transmission network.
“The work is estimated to add £108 to energy bills by 2031.
Please take a moment to complete the Vox Political Reader Survey.
Your answers are anonymous and will help shape future coverage.
Click here to take part.
“But Ofgem said people would end up saving about £80 more than they otherwise would, as the investment will help lower the reliance on imported gas and make wholesale energy cheaper, leading to a net energy bill rise of about £30 a year.”
I’m old enough to remember what we were told when privatisation was announced, back in the 1980s – that bills would be cheaper and the system would be upgraded, due to private investment.
This announcement is the latest proof that those claims were fantasy from the start.
To read the rest, head over to The Whip Line.
A subscription unlocks all my analysis and helps keep independent UK political journalism going.
Share this post:
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
