Taking a break from misleading the public about migrants, Reform leader Nigel Farage decided to instead lie to the public about disability benefits claimants. Yes, despite getting massively overshadowed by Starmer’s desperate reshuffle, Farage pressed ahead with his mission of being as deplorable as humanly possible at the Reform party conference. Farage vowed to crackdown on welfare, which is weird for a party with four MPs and no real say in policy. As part of this, he’s appointed Lee Anderson as Reform’s “spokesman on Welfare”. This is a very odd appointment, as not only is this the same guy who said you could feed yourself for just 30p a day, but the UK government doesn’t have a welfare department – that’s a US government term.
But setting aside that, let’s look at what Reform would actually do for disabled and poor people on benefits. Well, spoiler – it definitely isn’t in keeping with the “looking after our own” spirit Farage and his ilk thrive off of.
Farage takes a break from hating immigrants to hate on disabled people – by appointing Lee Anderson
In an interview with ITV, Farage said:
There are too many young people being put on disability benefits, being literally cast out of the system, classed as victims, left there. It isn’t good for the economy, it isn’t good for them as human beings.
Straight out of the bat, letting us know he’s going to screw young disabled people even harder than Labour will. Logically, of course, we know that more young people are being put on disability benefits because there’s a better understanding of neurodivergent and mental health conditions than there ever has been. Kids are also growing up in the worst poverty, feeling the backlash of multiple political shit storms and of course, spending their formative years either terrified of COVID or forced into school and physically disabled by it.
He confirmed 30p Lee Anderson’s appointment by telling Robert Peston:
He’s going to work with others and craft policy. And the thing about Lee is that he worked in a Citizens Advice Bureau. You know, he knows there are those that genuinely deserve help, but there are many frankly that don’t.
There’s no such thing as a “disability register”, but Farage knows the public doesn’t know that
Again odd to be crafting a policy when you have zero power, but this is all about Farage’s grand plan to be prime minister in a couple of years. Sadly he’s only parroting what he knows a lot of his voter base believes. None more so than with his final shit nugget:
And the current system is that you go to your GP and your GP is almost pressurised to put you on the disability register. All of that has to change.
This categorically untrue, because a GP appointment to discuss any issues you’re having is only the start of your journey to a diagnosis. A GP also only has any sort of say by writing a letter as part of evidence when you claim PIP or a fit note if you’re claiming Universal Credit. There’s also the glaringly obvious fact that there is no such thing as a “disability register” in the UK.
This however, is a typical tactic by politicians trying to appeal to a certain subset of people who will always believe the “benefit scrounger” narrative. Because most of Farage’s fanbase will vaguely remember when there was a disability register and not know it ceased to exist in 1996. It’s the same reason politicians often use outdated language like “sick note” and “incapacity benefit”. You know the type, their brothers, pals, uncles, dogs, mother gets PIP, but they’re a window cleaner.
When I pointed out this, what I thought was a very obvious fact, on Twitter, I was predictably met with a torrent of (mostly) working class men telling me how wrong I am. They pointed to local government priority lists for support and DWP stats of who claims benefits – but those aren’t a unified register. Stats are literally that and they only show those who claim benefits, of the estimated 16 million disabled people in the UK around just 6.9 million claim PIP, ESA, DLA or Attendance allowance.
Media complicity feeds into public misinformation
Most disability benefits aren’t out-of-work benefits, so it would make no sense to talk about them in the same sentence as joblessness. Unless of course you were trying to turn the public against disabled people so you could slash their benefits. Because there is no way that a politician like Farage doesn’t know both how the system works and that the public support for disability benefits is at an all-time low.
What was missing from the interview though, as is usual with Farage, is that there was not a single pushback or correction to his obvious lies. How can someone who is as celebrated a journalist as Peston sit there and not even think to go “well there isn’t a disability register”. But as I wrote last week, the corporate media aren’t exactly forthcoming with correcting him and at this point there’s a reason why.
Dumbed-down hatred to keep the electorate dumbed down from Lee Anderson
30p Lee Anderson took to Twitter to crow about his new role, writing a truly unhinged diatribe which you could almost imagine being shouted at some weird US election rally. He gave a massive list of people he 100% definitely he saw cheating the system. These included young women getting pregnant to get benefits, men choosing between the dole or a life of crime, immigrants coming over, getting benefits, and sending them back home. It reminded me eerily of Peter Lilley’s I’ve Got a Little List speech at the Tory Conference 1992, but obviously a more dumbed-down version because Reform don’t want their voters to think they’re toffs enough to know The Mikado.
30p’s new list also of course included this gem, because they’re not above attacking disabled kids too:
Did I see families with 4 or 5 children all with ADHD who were just thrown a load of money each month and forgot about? 100% yes.
Not only is this utter bullshit, but it’s convenient that at the same time Lee Anderson is telling lies about kids on disability benefits, that Farage thought he could sneak out that while Reform would lift the two child benefit cap for parents in work – which is a roll back on his previous promise to scrap the cap for all.
Farage needs voters to be only be angry at the vulnerable
It’s a classic case of what Farage does best: holding the biscuit tin, giving the working man one biscuit then going “watch out that immigrant/ disabled person/ trans person (delete as appropriate) is going to pinch your biscuit”.
Because that’s essentially what Reform policies are. They have nothing that would actually benefit working people. Farage has previously supported zero hour contracts and consistently voted against worker rights – so all that they can do is convince their supporters that those at the bottom of the barrel are the ones who will make it harder for them, not the ones at the top who are sitting on the barrel.
Farage’s only hope of making gains with Reform is by keeping people angry, but only at minoritised communities and by making sure that Reform supporters stay dangerously uninformed. Because an uneducated electorate is an easy one to control.
Featured image via the Canary
