… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: two-child benefit cap

  • It hurt when I crashed my bike into a pothole – and it taught me the true price of austerity George Monbiot

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    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 says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/04/crashed-bike-pothole-cost-cycling

    …

    I was lucky. Last week, I was cycling downhill when I hit a pothole. The front wheel folded into an infinity symbol. I went over the handlebars and, with no time to put my hands out, landed on my face. My helmet and glasses took most of the impact. I emerged, remarkably, with just a few cuts and bruises.

    …

    Austerity – which leaves our potholes, alongside many other gaps in public provision, unfilled – does not save money. On the contrary, it costs us a fortune. What the rich might save in taxes, the rest must pay over and over again.

    False economies abound. For example, the government may at last be persuaded to remove the Tories’ vicious, Malthusian two-child benefit cap. But what many people have failed to grasp is that behind it stands another brick wall: the household benefits cap. If families now receive money for a third child, it could push them past the household limit, and they’ll be scarcely better off than before. This household cap has extreme and perverse consequences. It ensures that rents, even in the social sector, are almost everywhere unaffordable to the families affected, most of which are headed by lone parents. The result is that they are thrown into temporary accommodation, which local authorities must provide at far greater expense: roughly £2.3bn a year. Being forced into temporary accommodation also curtails adults’ employment opportunities and children’s performance at school, and generates great suffering, which can translate into physical and mental health problems, which of course means further economic impacts.

    In 2019, a parliamentary committee called on the government to “conduct a full cost benefit analysis of the benefit cap”. The government rejected the call, but said it would explore the possibility in future. I checked with the Department for Work and Pensions – it still hasn’t happened.

    …

    Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
    Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.

  • Jeremy Corbyn: Surprise, surprise – Labour is reaping what it has sown

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    Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
    Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-new-party-labour-uk-poverty-b2827322.html

    Instead of addressing child poverty, homelessness, poor working conditions or any of the real issues impacting this country, Labour has chosen to deflect the blame and pour billions into arms, says Jeremy Corbyn. Britain is tired of having no political choice – and we’re here to fix that

    …

    Over the past year, the government has continued a programme of austerity and privatisation. It has refused to lift the two-child benefit cap, the single biggest driver of child poverty. It has tried to take away the winter fuel allowance. It has increased the bus fare cap. And it has tried to take away £5bn from disabled people, curating a two-tiered benefit system that deprives thousands of people of a dignified life.

    There is one area where the government has been very generous, though: arms spending. Government military spending is now at £31.7bn, which is a 6 per cent increase in real terms from last year. Imagine how much better ordinary people’s lives would be if we spent that money on schools, hospitals and green energy instead.

    …

    People have had enough of a political regime that serves the interests of billionaires and corporations. They have had enough of a government that inflicts suffering at home and enables genocide abroad. They have had enough of broken promises from political parties that fail to deliver real change.

    Original article at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-new-party-labour-uk-poverty-b2827322.html

    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
    Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
    Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine 'Private Eye'.
    Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.

  • Morning Star Editorial: Purge of dissenting MPs is a sign of Starmer’s weakness

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/purge-dissenting-mps-sign-starmers-weakness

     Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in Downing Street, London, on his first official visit to Britain, July 17, 2025

    …

    Just 12 per cent of the public approve of the government’s record, a historic low. Current polling shows the great majority of Labour MPs losing their seats at the next election, either to Reform, or to the new left party struggling to be born, or in Scotland and Wales to nationalist parties.

    Certainly, at present it is as easy to see the suspended four — and the already-whipless John McDonnell and Apsana Begum who rebelled a year ago against the two-child benefit cap — securing re-election as independents than as candidates of the Starmer regime.

    It is certainly hard to see this move breaking resistance to the new austerity agenda going forward. Only successful leaders can hope to get away with this sort of crackdown.

    So this latest exercise in authoritarianism speaks only to Starmer’s loss of capacity to advance his right-wing agenda, as well as to his consigliere Morgan McSweeney’s blinkered view that whatever the problem is the answer lies in attacking the left.

    But it is also a challenge to the Labour left. Over the last five years it has consistently failed to find the means to arrest the Starmer-McSweeney purge of the left, often for want of the simple virtue of sticking together when under attack.

    The response to the latest suspensions has been robust, in words at least. The left has shown it can inflict defeats on the government, reversing specific policy proposals.

    But it is now beyond obvious that only a fighting plan to actually oust Starmer himself has any prospect of reversing Labour’s dismal prospects in time to save the next election. They should take every opportunity — and even create them — to express no-confidence in this government of austerity, war and authoritarianism.

    Failure to do so will certainly turbocharge the case for the new socialist party being promoted by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn. The appeal of that venture rests in part on the perception that Labour is a lost cause.

    Starmer’s latest sanctions against dissent tend to make that case. He has flung down the gauntlet — the left in the PLP, the affiliated unions and the membership must pick it up.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/purge-dissenting-mps-sign-starmers-weakness

    Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much
    Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.

  • Starmer’s Labour: cuts to everything except the war machine

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    https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmers-labour-cuts-everything-except-war-machine

    The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP

    THE Labour leadership is adopting a scorched-earth policy to social programmes and public spending, with no section of society safe from their cuts. The consequences will be very grave for some of the poorest in society, for society as a whole and for the Labour Party.

    In the first year of a Labour government, we have had cuts to the winter fuel allowance, a refusal to budge on the two-child benefit cap, cuts to sickness and disability benefits, and a tightening of departmental spending overall, which means cuts for some and a squeeze for the NHS.

    This list is growing longer all the time. The latest target is the provision of special educational needs (SEN) spending in our schools, which ministers claim is spiralling out of control. There is also the beginning of a concerted PR campaign to abolish the “triple-lock” on the state pension, even though the meagre amount provided is one of the lowest in western Europe and insufficient for a decent retirement.

    The main exception to this all-round austerity drive is military spending, which is really spiralling out of control. In fact, the pace of spending cuts elsewhere is designed to fill the real hole in government finances caused by the commitment to raise military spending to 5 per cent of GDP, a promise given to placate Donald Trump by Keir Starmer at the Nato summit.

    …

    Dianne Abbott’s article continues at https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmers-labour-cuts-everything-except-war-machine

    Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
    Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.


  • Children in England ‘living in almost Dickensian levels of poverty’

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    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/08/children-england-living-almost-dickensian-levels-poverty

    Children’s commissioner says any Labour strategy to tackle deprivation must scrap the two-child benefit cap

    Children in England are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty” where deprivation has become normalised, the children’s commissioner has said, as she insisted the two-child benefit limit must be scrapped.

    Young people said they had experienced not having enough water to shower, rats biting through their walls, and mouldy bedrooms, among a number of examples in a report on the “crisis of hardship” gripping the country.

    Dame Rachel de Souza said she had noticed a significant shift in how young people talked about their lives since she became children’s commissioner four years ago, and that “issues that were traditionally seen as ‘adult’ concerns are now keenly felt by children”.

    “Children shared harrowing accounts of hardship, with some in almost Dickensian levels of poverty,” she said. “They don’t talk about ‘poverty’ as an abstract concept but about not having the things that most people would consider basic: a safe home that isn’t mouldy or full or rats, with a bed big enough to stretch out in, ‘luxury’ food like bacon, a place to do homework, heating, privacy in the bathroom and being able to wash, having their friends over, and not having to travel hours to school.”

    …

    She said that, in “one of the richest societies in the world”, people in power “should be ashamed that children are growing up knowing their futures are being determined by their financial circumstances”.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/08/children-england-living-almost-dickensian-levels-poverty

    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
    Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.