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With credit to commenter NickJanczak9665, who first raised the alarm.
When Keir Starmer announced plans to slash disability benefits — potentially stripping up to 1.3 million people of their lifeline — most of us saw cruelty.
But some saw a pattern.
One viewer of our recent video on the cuts, NickJanczak9665, put it bluntly:
“Is Starmer rolling out The Shock Doctrine? I’ve just read the book by Naomi Klein and it sounds like it’s straight out of the Neo-liberal/Milton Friedman playbook.”
They’re right.
This isn’t just about savings, nor efficiency, nor “reform.”
This is a textbook case of what author Naomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine — the calculated use of crisis to force through deeply unpopular policies that benefit the powerful while devastating the vulnerable.
And in this case, it’s being done under the banner of a Labour government.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
📘 What is The Shock Doctrine?
In her groundbreaking 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein revealed a grim truth:
Governments and corporate elites often exploit crises — wars, economic collapse, natural disasters — as opportunities to roll out hardline free-market policies before the public can resist.
The method:
-
Induce or seize on shock (economic, social, psychological)
-
Use it to dismantle public protections
-
Privatise and profit from the wreckage
The result: concentrated wealth and power. Broken societies. Mass suffering.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
🚨 Starmer’s cuts fit the model
Let’s apply that to Starmer’s plan:
-
The crisis: Britain’s economy is still reeling from years of austerity, the pandemic, and a deep cost-of-living crisis. Public services are crumbling. Voters are exhausted.
-
The narrative: “The system isn’t working.” “People should work if they can.” “Taxpayers deserve better.”
-
The solution: Cut £4.8 billion from disability and sickness support — even though it risks killing people, pushes hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, and will likely cost more than it saves.
Just as Klein warned: the policy doesn’t solve the crisis — it exploits it.
Get my free guide: “10 Political Lies You Were Sold This Decade” — just subscribe to our email list here:
👉 https://voxpoliticalonline.com
🤐 Where are the media?
This is where shock doctrine needs silence to thrive.
Not one major broadcaster has challenged Starmer on the fatal consequences of his plan.
They echo the framing: reform, welfare dependency, incentives to work.
But let’s be honest: when you remove essential disability support from people you know cannot survive without it — you’re not reforming.
You’re killing.
🩻 “The system isn’t working” — so let’s break it more?
Starmer admits PIP is paid whether someone works or not.
It exists because living with a disability costs more — not because it keeps people out of work.
So why take it away?
Because — in the words of Milton Friedman, patron saint of neoliberalism — “only a crisis… produces real change.”
Starmer is creating a funding shortfall on purpose, knowing full well that disabled people pushed off PIP won’t get jobs in a shrinking labour market that already discriminates against them.
This will drive more people to rely on emergency NHS care, homelessness services, and local authority social care — costing more than any savings made.
That’s not policy failure.
That’s the plan.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
📣 Naomi Klein, if you’re reading this…
Your voice would be welcome.
The patterns are clear, the outcomes are predictable, and the stakes could not be higher.
Between 2011 and 2019, welfare policies of previous – Conservative – governments were linked to 100,000 excess deaths among sick and disabled people in the UK.
Labour’s proposed cuts could bring us a second round.
History will record it as deliberate.
Starmer isn’t resisting neoliberalism.
He’s enacting its next chapter.
📢 Share this article, tag Naomi Klein, and demand accountability
If you recognise the strategy, name it.
If you care about justice, stop it.
Share this post:
Vox Political needs your help!
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(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
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1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
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7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Starmer’s Shock Doctrine: Labour’s deadly welfare cuts and the Neoliberal playbook
Share this post:
When Keir Starmer announced plans to slash disability benefits — potentially stripping up to 1.3 million people of their lifeline — most of us saw cruelty.
But some saw a pattern.
One viewer of our recent video on the cuts, NickJanczak9665, put it bluntly:
They’re right.
This isn’t just about savings, nor efficiency, nor “reform.”
This is a textbook case of what author Naomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine — the calculated use of crisis to force through deeply unpopular policies that benefit the powerful while devastating the vulnerable.
And in this case, it’s being done under the banner of a Labour government.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
📘 What is The Shock Doctrine?
In her groundbreaking 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein revealed a grim truth:
Governments and corporate elites often exploit crises — wars, economic collapse, natural disasters — as opportunities to roll out hardline free-market policies before the public can resist.
The method:
Induce or seize on shock (economic, social, psychological)
Use it to dismantle public protections
Privatise and profit from the wreckage
The result: concentrated wealth and power. Broken societies. Mass suffering.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
🚨 Starmer’s cuts fit the model
Let’s apply that to Starmer’s plan:
The crisis: Britain’s economy is still reeling from years of austerity, the pandemic, and a deep cost-of-living crisis. Public services are crumbling. Voters are exhausted.
The narrative: “The system isn’t working.” “People should work if they can.” “Taxpayers deserve better.”
The solution: Cut £4.8 billion from disability and sickness support — even though it risks killing people, pushes hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, and will likely cost more than it saves.
Just as Klein warned: the policy doesn’t solve the crisis — it exploits it.
Get my free guide: “10 Political Lies You Were Sold This Decade” — just subscribe to our email list here:
👉 https://voxpoliticalonline.com
🤐 Where are the media?
This is where shock doctrine needs silence to thrive.
Not one major broadcaster has challenged Starmer on the fatal consequences of his plan.
They echo the framing: reform, welfare dependency, incentives to work.
But let’s be honest: when you remove essential disability support from people you know cannot survive without it — you’re not reforming.
You’re killing.
🩻 “The system isn’t working” — so let’s break it more?
Starmer admits PIP is paid whether someone works or not.
It exists because living with a disability costs more — not because it keeps people out of work.
So why take it away?
Because — in the words of Milton Friedman, patron saint of neoliberalism — “only a crisis… produces real change.”
Starmer is creating a funding shortfall on purpose, knowing full well that disabled people pushed off PIP won’t get jobs in a shrinking labour market that already discriminates against them.
This will drive more people to rely on emergency NHS care, homelessness services, and local authority social care — costing more than any savings made.
That’s not policy failure.
That’s the plan.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
📣 Naomi Klein, if you’re reading this…
Your voice would be welcome.
The patterns are clear, the outcomes are predictable, and the stakes could not be higher.
Between 2011 and 2019, welfare policies of previous – Conservative – governments were linked to 100,000 excess deaths among sick and disabled people in the UK.
Labour’s proposed cuts could bring us a second round.
History will record it as deliberate.
Starmer isn’t resisting neoliberalism.
He’s enacting its next chapter.
📢 Share this article, tag Naomi Klein, and demand accountability
If you recognise the strategy, name it.
If you care about justice, stop it.
Share this post:
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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