Therese Coffey had ‘Time of Her Life’ cutting Universal Credit and wrecking the economy

Last Updated: October 9, 2021By Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Time of her life: Therese Coffey danced (badly) and sang (off-key) as her government removed the Universal Credit uplift that has been a lifeline for millions of people.

This was more ‘dirty dealing’ than Dirty Dancing:

Yes, it’s true:

Here’s a longer clip, if your ears can stand it:

The move not only shows astonishing hypocrisy on the part of the Work and Pensions Secretary…

… it was also utterly illiterate in economic terms:

On a national level, the cut tells us much about the Conservative government’s priorities…

https://twitter.com/LeftWingSociety/status/1445666167977242628

https://twitter.com/RD_HaIe/status/1446149537194725376

… but it is on a personal level that the cut will hit home – and this is what the Tories are hoping because it means those who won’t lose cash because of it won’t be bothered by it, and they probably won’t associate it with harm to the economy that will attack them too.

Spokespeople from the Labour Party have spoken up against it…

… too late to make any difference…

… and in any case, Labour leader ‘Little Keir’ Starmer has apparently said he would not restore the uplift if elected into government:

Meanwhile the Tories and their allies in the media are building a false impression that the cut is a good thing…

… even though the experts tell a different story:

https://twitter.com/withorpe/status/1446166609119399938

Some Tories are saying other systems are in place to take the bite off the cut. Nadhim Zahawi has pointed to a £500 million fund available to local authorities…

… but councils are facing an economic squeeze of their own; the Tories aren’t giving them enough to run their services properly. In any case, the UC uplift cost around £4.5 billion per year – nine times as much as is on offer in the scheme Zahawi mentioned.

In the iNews article (link above), Tory backbencher Steve Baker says it would cost £10 billion to sort out all the problems created by his own government’s mishandling of UC.

And what of the prime minister?

Boris Johnson once described the quarter of a million pounds he received alongside his salary as an MP, writing a column for a Sunday newspaper, as “chicken feed”. Is that why he doesn’t seem to think the UC cut matters?

The facts – for those of us who have to work in Johnson’s post-Brexit, passed-out Britain – are enormously different from his distorted viewpoint:

He has certainly said he wants wages to rise. He just hasn’t said how he proposes to do it.

And there is a much easier way to raise the kind of cash needed to set UC at a rate that won’t plunge millions of people into poverty:

Johnson won’t do it.

His entire plan – if he can be said to have had a plan at all – appears to be to bleed every last penny out of the UK’s working people and give it to the idle rich, who squirrel it away in offshore tax havens (see the Pandora Papers for details).

It seems the aim is to turn the nation into a zombie economy where working – and working-class – people are worked like slaves to service an ever-increasing national debt, while the super-rich members of his own class live it up on the profits and put nothing back.

Does it seem that way to you?

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  1. Tony October 9, 2021 at 11:03 am - Reply

    The cost of this benefit is, I think, £6 billion a year.

    Cancelling the recent increase in the military budget would save £4 billion. That would leave only £2 to find. That could be found from the military budget also.

    Britain’s military budget is already one of the highest in the world.

    Shameful that the Labour frontbench backed the increase. Shameful, but no surprising.

  2. Stephen Brophy October 9, 2021 at 4:29 pm - Reply

    this is thanks to starmer and his friends, we wouldn’t have a tory government if it wasn’t for the sabotagers! but we live in a society of idiots who just vote for whoever the paper say is a “good guy!”

  3. Stu October 9, 2021 at 5:45 pm - Reply

    Looking at the smugness of all these heartless Tories confirms to me that they truly believe that we have been put in our place.
    I used to use the drip,drip analogy to demonstrate their sneaky Fascist technique but I now choose to suggest a candle slowly heating a bucket of water, where the lid is put on just before it boils.
    Expect many more dead cat distractions like the Bottomley (arse) statement.

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