This is worth reading, from Another Angry Voice:

The professional media hacks are reporting Keir Starmer’s backtrack on his party’s proposed disability cuts as another U-turn, but it’s not actually a change of direction, it’s just a strategic retreat to a new position of imposing destitution and harsh new restrictions on people who become sick or disabled in the future.

Starmer and the appalling people he’s surrounded himself with have retreated from their original position of driving both currently disabled people and people who will become disabled in the future into destitution, to just targeting their cruel economic sanctions at those who are not yet disabled.

Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Liz Kendall are now intent on creating a two-tier disability benefits system under which people who are currently disabled and in receipt of PIP and the disability element of Universal Credit get will get to keep their subsistence benefits, while those who become disabled in the future will have to jump though much higher hoops to qualify for significantly lower levels of support.

Keir Starmer’s so-called “U-turn” on proposed cuts to disability benefits isn’t a change of heart—it’s a tactical repositioning.

The plan still creates a two-tier system that preserves existing support for current claimants, while making it much harder—and financially punishing—for future disabled people to qualify.

This isn’t just technocratic reform; it’s a conscious political choice to target some of the most vulnerable, including older workers developing age-related conditions like arthritis, chronic pain, and cardiovascular illness.

Many of the very people who will be affected have worked all their lives, only to be punished for becoming ill.

The justification? Not fraud (which is negligible in PIP), not helping people into work (PIP isn’t even a work-related benefit), and certainly not cost—because even modest reforms to tax breaks for the wealthy would save far more than the £3.5 billion they’re trying to cut here.

And the most cynical part? Labour is trying to rush these reforms through without an economic impact assessment, echoing the same tactics used during Tory welfare cuts in the 2010s.

That’s not “pragmatism”—it’s evasion.

Angry Voice lays it all out with justified fury.

I’ll only add: if Labour MPs don’t stop this now, they won’t just be betraying disabled people—they’ll be handing the Tories the script for the next general election.

Source: Keir Starmer’s two-tier disability system is unacceptable