DR DYLAN MURPHY challenges the idea that social security places an economic burden on the public
THE current Labour government of red Tories has doubled down recently on its propaganda against those people claiming benefits in the UK.
These reactionary comments range from Starmer’s pledge in the Sun to be ruthless in his cuts to benefits, to Reeves making inflated claims in the same paper that spending on benefits has “spiralled out of control.”
In the same interview with the Sun Reeves bragged that Labour is “introducing the biggest welfare fraud and error package in recent history.”
The implication is clear: those claiming benefits, including those workers on low wages claiming elements of universal credit, are an undeserving burden on the British economy.
In the “golden days” of the Victorian era they at least maintained a distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. Under Starmer’s Labour all people who claim benefits are clearly in the undeserving poor category and should be made to suffer ever greater poverty all to help “turbo charge” economic growth.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on patrol with officers from West Yorkshire Police during a visit to Halifax Police Station, December 20, 202
LABOUR boasts of an immigration crackdown and plans for sweeping new seize and search powers set a “dangerous precedent” and embolden the far right, campaigners warn.
Ahead of a crunch parliamentary vote on their Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill today, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government has gone on the offensive, trumpeting thousands of arrests of exploited “illegal” migrants made since assuming office in July.
Between polling day and January 31 2025, 5,424 visits were made by immigration officers to workplaces across the country, leading to 3,930 arrests — numbers they proudly proclaim to be 38 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Hailing a record 609 arrests in January alone — almost twice the tally of 352 a year earlier under ther Tories — Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was boosting enforcement to “record levels.”
She said: “The immigration rules must be respected and enforced.
MILLSTONE: Parts of the Labour Party see Nigel Farage’s Reform as worthy of emulation
You only have to look at the dire polling of Labour’s sister parties in Europe to see that aping the hard right on migration leads to spectacularly bad results, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
LABOUR is facing calls, both internally and from its enemies, that it should become even more anti-migrant in its policies and rhetoric in order to stave off the growing threat of Reform UK. This is a morally and politically bankrupt approach that will lead Labour to disaster.
If anyone doubts that, just take a look at some of the traditional left parties in Europe who have trodden that path, they have largely been reduced to a rabble.
The BBC reports that a group of “around 40 MPs” calling themselves the Red Wall group are calling in the government for a stronger message on immigration to stave off the electoral threat posed by Reform UK.
At the same time, there has been the proposed revival of the odious Blue Labour group with effectively the same aim. It has received a shot in the arm with the invitation of its ideological leader Maurice Glasman to Donald Trump’s inauguration. This is a direct foreign intervention in British politics and specifically into Labour politics as the Maga reactionaries try to reshape Western politics in their own image.
Labour has also decided to boost Reform UK’s advertising, by issuing ads which mimic their content and style on deportations.
An investigation found the pair had no case to answer and that the trust had breached its own disciplinary policy
Two NHS professionals were investigated and barred from their workplace for expressing interest in organising a peaceful protest in support of Palestine during their lunch break.
The therapist and nurse were accused of posing a threat to the “personal safety” of the staff at Kensington and Chelsea child and adolescent mental health service, and of “bringing the trust into disrepute” for considering the demonstration.
The pair, who the Guardian is calling Layla and Maya, were told they were to be investigated and could not enter the building they worked at before being redeployed to new NHS workplaces in London.
A three-month investigation into the pair’s conduct found they had no case to answer and that the trust had breached its own disciplinary policy in its treatment of them.
The investigator noted that, though there was no intent from the pair to bully other staff members, two staff members did feel unsafe to come into work “as an indirect result” of their intent to organise the protest.
The two professionals filed an internal grievance against the Central and North West London NHS foundation, which upheld their claim of policy breaches in their treatment.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
British chancellor Rachel Reeves has backed ‘catastrophic’ plans to build a third runway at Heathrow | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer appear happy to pursue growth at any cost – including the destruction of the planet
Last weekend the temperature at the North Pole was 20℃ above average, taking it above ice’s melting point in what was described as “a very extreme winter warming event” by Mika Rantanen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Four days later, things got worse still. The Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that last month was the warmest January ever recorded at 1.75℃ hotter than pre-industrial times. This is especially worrying since scientists expected temperatures to fall this year as La Nina took over from the previous year’s El Nino. We now face the worrying possibility that the impact of cooling La Ninas might be declining.
Amid these developments, British chancellor Rachel Reeves has backed plans to build a third runway at Heathrow, which climate campaigners warn would be “catastrophic”, and reports have emerged that she is also poised to support the opening of the giant Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, which energy secretary Ed Miliband has described as “climate vandalism”.
Reeves’ drive for economic growth at the expense of the planet is a far cry from the strong green agenda that the Labour Party seemed to favour ahead of last year’s general election.
Labour’s apparent change of heart unfortunately coincides with Donald Trump taking office in the US. The climate science community is now braced for the impact of Trump’s newly appointed Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk, running a coach and horses through the US foreign aid programme.
Trump’s administration has also already started removing or downgrading mentions of climate change from federal government web pages – a sign that we are in a worse position than a decade ago after the 2015 Paris climate summit, when there were indications that the dangers of climate breakdown were at last being appreciated at higher political levels.
Now, one of the world’s leading climate specialists, professor James Hansen of Columbia University, says that the international target agreed upon at the Paris summit of limiting global temperature rises to 2℃ is “dead”. The pace of global heating had been “significantly underestimated”, he explained.
The fossil carbon states and corporations with their coal, oil and gas markets, meanwhile, are more certain about their prospects and happy to promote their wares with enthusiasm. There were 2,500 oil, gas and coal lobbyists at the 2023 Dubai COP28 climate summit, four times as many as attended the previous year in Egypt.
If forced onto the defensive, fossil fuel giants have several options. One is to move the focus away from mitigation to adaptation, another is to boost the potential of carbon capture and storage, and yet another is geoengineering.
Then, if all else fails they can fall back on direct air capture; removing carbon from the air once it is dispersed in the atmosphere, rather than as it is emitted. In other words, we should accept the likelihood of an “overshoot” of carbon emissions and hope that future technologies can save the day!
None of these scenarios has any current relevance as none can be developed in anything remotely like the time available given the speed of climate breakdown. There has to be urgent political change at the highest level to engage in emergency decarbonisation.
At a lower level, there is some good news at least. The cost of producing electricity from renewable sources is continuing to fall and the whole process of embracing renewables could accelerate if just one or two countries demonstrated just how quickly change can come.
The UK is in a hugely favoured position to do so, having huge scope to expand land-based wind and solar power as well as offshore wind. That should be one of the British government’s two absolute priorities, the other being a rapid programme of home and workplace insulation.
Further moves would be an immediate tightening up of house building regulations requiring much higher levels of insulation together with grants and loans for home environmental improvements. Transition to electrical vehicles should be accelerated along with much expansion of public transport.
Changes in agriculture must be brought in to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, with methane emission control frequently being overlooked. Air and marine transport must also be subject to far greater emissions control. Any plans to expand existing airports must be abandoned as nonsensical, and subsidies for oil and gas production should be transferred to renewables.
All this, and much more, would cost money, and a lot of it, but there is plenty of that around, readily available from many sources including rigorous control of tax evasion and avoidance, together with new wealth taxes. If climate breakdown is recognised for what it is, the greatest threat to UK security, then the entire ‘defence’ budget should be rethought in this light. More than this, any government that recognises the challenge facing every one of us would see the need to borrow to help fund the response.
So, what of Labour so far? Regrettably, there is little to applaud despite the efforts of a rather isolated few on the front benches and a handful of backbenchers such as Clive Lewis. The party’s brave words of a year ago are difficult to find and Labour is now about growth at almost any cost – destruction of the planet included. The lobby brigade is winning.
Even carbon capture and nuclear power are now hailed by the Labour government as part of the answer even though the first is unproven and the second will take decades to bring in while we only have years, not decades, to make the change.
Perhaps Labour will come to its senses as climate disasters accelerate but it is now a party that has lost any sense of mission. It has forgotten its history, how a Labour government of the late 1940s took on seemingly impossible tasks and succeeded in many respects against the odds. Can the party change now? Perhaps, but don’t hold your breath.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
