Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
“Energy bills up to nearly £2000 a year. Water bills up by 31% in some areas. Basic food prices keep rising – the list goes on. People aren’t fooling around when they say today is the start of “Awful April”. Especially awful for single parents who we know will be hit hardest by these price hikes.
“These spiralling costs come on the back of axing winter fuel payments for pensioners, refusing to remove the two-child benefit cap and cutting benefits for the sick and disabled.
“These are political choices. Rather than making the poorest and most vulnerable in society bear the brunt of the cost of living crisis, Labour could have chosen instead to tax a tiny percentage of the wealth of multi-millionaires and billionaires. They’ve made a choice, to take money off the old, ill and disabled.
“Labour have again and again made the wrong choices, which has left many of the poorest households at breaking point.”
Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Protesters on Whitehall in London, as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivers her spring statement to MPs in the House of Commons, March 26, 2025
Government must take action, union warns: ‘We can’t go on with billionaires getting ever richer whilst working people suffer’
CASH-STRAPPED Britons will be squeezed for an extra £66 every month from April as a barrage of bill hikes sees the cost-of-living crisis bite.
Millions of hard-up households, already paying what MPs said were “world-beatingly” high bills, will be forced to shell out even more for essentials from Tuesday.
GMB union urged ministers to take bold steps to help working people facing across-the-board price rises for energy, water, council tax, internet, road tax and the TV licence.
“Households have been struggling with the cost-of-living crisis for several years now,” said the union’s national secretary Andy Prendergast. “This latest set of increases shows there still isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel.
“The government must take bold steps to put money in people’s pockets,” he thundered. “We can’t go on with billionaires getting ever richer whilst working people suffer.”
…
Cat Hobbs, founder and director of public service campaign group We Own It, said: “With bill hikes across many essential services this spring, it looks like the cost-of-living crisis is sadly here to stay.
“The word ‘essential’ is important here. Heat, shelter, water — these are all things that we need to survive and none of them are getting cheaper.
“Water is the poster-child for the failed privatisation experiment, with companies on the brink of collapse scrambling for more of our money.
“Companies that have racked up huge debts to pay dividends are now running out of other people’s cash.
“Decades of underinvestment has killed our rivers and put the whole water network at risk.
“Modern, publicly owned services must be the goal for any progressive government.”
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.
Austerity was a monstrous scam – a stitch up between the ruling elite and the media and think tank class to sell a decade of outright fraud and disaster capitalism as a sober but necessary correction from the excesses of Tony Blair. It was appalling and evil – but at least enough of them knew it was all a racket.
Reeves and Starmer are altogether different beasts. They’re true believers. The economy really doesn’t want those libraries in Wolverhampton!
It’s as if the economy is an angry volcano god that demands constant ritual sacrifices of poor and disabled people. Past rulers might have made up those stories so as to avoid hard questions such as “why do you get to have the big gold hat while I have to muck out this goat shed?” but we’re now at the stage where the people in charge really, truly believe that the volcano won’t erupt if we just throw enough people into it.
And, unfortunately, their response to the volcano’s stubborn insistence on erupting despite the rain of bodies is “more human sacrifice! The economy is still mad at us!”
Reeves seems to believe her powerful invocations of “growth, growth, growth” aren’t stirring the economy god into action because poor and disabled people are blocking its ears. “You’re not working hard enough! You’re not putting in enough effort! If you were, this would be working! It can’t be because my ideas are trash! Into the volcano with you!”
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.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Responding to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, the Co-Leader of The Green Party, Adrian Ramsay MP, said, “The Chancellor had a choice today. To rebalance our economy by asking the very wealthiest to contribute more, or to remove vital support from ill and disabled people. That she chose to take from the most vulnerable to balance her books is a damning reflection of how out of touch this government is. It is morally repugnant.”
He continued, “And it’s not just ill and disabled people who will suffer as the Chancellor doubles down on cuts to frontline services. This will weaken our communities and leave us all poorer. Labour once claimed that they were for the many, not the few – it’s clear now that this is no longer the case.”
TORY 2015/LABOUR 2025 SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: (Above) Workers and disabled people protesting outside Norfolk County Hall against Norfolk County Council cuts to services on October 2015Photo: Roger Blackwell/flickr/CC
DR DYLAN MURPHY asks why Labour is continuing the Tory war on the disabled, when viable alternatives have been spelt out in detail
IN LATE February of 2025 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued a damning report into the failures of Labour to address income inequality and the deepening levels of poverty in the UK.
The UN committee criticised Labour for failing to address “income inequality or reducing poverty,” which hamper “the progressive realisation of economic, social and cultural rights.’’
Ironically enough, the UN called on Labour to increase spending on housing, health, education and social security in order to reverse the huge damage caused by blue Tory austerity from 2010 to 2024. Since this call the red Tories in power have announced their intention to make massive cuts to public spending across all government departments except defence and maybe health.
On the issue of social security, over which Labour is determined to make killer cuts, the UN expressed serious concern about the impact of blue Tory austerity which had “resulted in severe economic hardship, increased reliance on food banks, homelessness, negative impacts on mental health and the stigmatisation of benefit claimants.”
Of course, food bank usage under Labour continues to grow as does the stigmatisation of benefit claimants which Starmer and company have engaged in with relish over the last few months.
Starmer, Reeves and Kendall seem to take a sadistic glee in attacking the disabled through the platforms of the Tory media using ultra right-wing rags such as The Telegraph and Sun to stigmatise the sick and disabled.
The biggest irony in this recent UN report is its call for Labour to actually increase the value of disability benefits such as PIP so that the UK can meet “the recommendations made by the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.”
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
