An internal monologue from Keir Starmer anticipating the Pathways to Work Green Paper vote of 1st July 2025
‘Given steady economic growth, however, ‘the true object of the Welfare State …is to teach people how to do without it’ [A. Peacock, ‘The Welfare Society’, 1961]. Whatever temporary benefits may have accrued from welfare interventions may now, it seems, flow from the workings of unimpeded market forces, and the Welfare State should be allowed to wither away as speedily as possible.’
—Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, ‘The Decline of the Welfare State’, Poverty—The Forgotten Englishmen (Pelican, 1970/ rev. 1973)
by Alan Morrison
The additions to PIP each day
Of approximately 1,000 people
Works out on average each year
As the equivalent of a city the size of Leicester
& that is unsustainable
If we are to have a welfare system into the future
It has to be dismantled reformed—
The fact that PIP keeps many disabled people
In some form of employment
Without which they would be forced to quit
Those jobs & lose independence
Because their extra costs due to disabilities
Would be unsustainable without it
(& so thus our ‘reforms’ will actually have
The opposite effect to that which we purport)
Is unsupportable
Because because becauseBecause of the wonderful things PIP does
That is all irrelevant
Because it’s politically inconvenient
As is the fact that we had a pandemic
As is the fact that so many have Long Covid
As is the fact that we have a mental health epidemic
Partly due to the prolonged lockdowns in the pandemic
But then Wes has been busy downgrading
The debilitating nature of anxiety & depression
At least rhetorically-speaking
& more & more psychiatrists are agreeing
That mental illness is being over-diagnosed
Thought not medications
Because those are pharmaceuticals’ bread & butter
In any case, & one must forget the optics
& jarring juxtapositions of disability cuts
& assisted dying going through Parliament
At the same point—all those made suicidal
By their vague agues may one day be
Chaperoned into suicide booths
Albeit at a cost to the taxpayer
But nothing compared to what it would cost
To sustain them in their benefits penury
At a shocking cost to the public purse
There is a ‘moral case’ for these reforms
Because the welfare system at the moment traps
Too many people in unemployment
While PIP traps too many in semi-employment
A sign the benefit actually works
In what it’s supposed to do
(Personal INDEPENDENCE Payment—
THE CLUE IS IN THE NAME!!!)
In helping too many disabled people
Maintain some form of employment
Which means that way they can contribute
Economically hence why counter-
Intuitively we need to decimate
That benefit because it’s too effective
So we will squeeze & squeeze until the PIPs squeak!
To sustain a welfare state we need public consent
Very difficult to maintain because we politicians
Constantly undermine it—
& we want to maintain taxpayer resentment
Towards the welfare state
Well into the future to come
So that way there will always be a public appetite
For relentless welfare cuts
& that way too we’ll keep the frothing red tops
In their ‘scrounger’ scapegoats for perpetuity
Mopping up the antipathy
Of the Great British Taxpayer
We need to keep the welfare state
So that we can keep cutting it
That is its prime purpose:
To be something there for the public to hate
We need to sustain the welfare hate
The welfare hate
The welfare hate
We need to sustain the welfare hate
Before it is too late
130 odd Labour rebels
Have signed up to block the bill before
It gets a second reading—
Just so much “noises off”—
Oh I can ‘read the room’
Just only when there’s no one else in it but me—
& presumably Mr. Speaker Hoyle
The Chorlton of Chorley & freebie wheelies
Will neglect to pick the amendment
As per my whispered promises
Of his future peerage
(O how far I’ve come—& I was only a toolmaker’s son—
& what an establishment tool I’ve become!)
If not, no matter, an olive branch from Badenoch
May rue save the day for us
What matter if we have to rely on Tory support
To get the bill through Parliament
I’m an out-of-the-closet Tory anyway
Not even a Red one but a True Blue,
Well, red, white & blue (I’m leader of completely
The wrong party—but then again,
I’ve destroyed changed it entirely)—
I’ll be glad to be another Ramsay MacDonald
& lose any vaguely leftwing Labour MPs left
& maybe even merge with the Tory Opposition
To form a new National(ist) Government,
After all, both our parties are infatuated with the flag,
Almost as much as Nigel Farage
Whom I may as well invite into the fold too
& make him Home Secretary—
(To be honest, I sort of lost the plot
With this welfare rebellion in Labour ranks
& the strength of feeling of the malcontents
Because I was preoccupied with the world
We live in rather than the world we would
Want to live in… Does that make sense…?
I’ve never been one for vision idealism…
I put country before party (pretty clearly),
I’ve changed the Labour party entirely
Into another party (call it Red Tory,
Though less of the Red)—I replaced
The Red Flag with the Union Jack,
& ‘Jerusalem’ with ‘God Save the King’…
& sent all the socialists packing…)
Just as it was a Labour government that created
The welfare system, it falls to this Tory
Labour Government to destroy it make sure
We’ve got a welfare system that’s sustainable
For the future to come (is that a tautology?).
That is a regressive progressive argument,
That is a Neoliberal Labour argument,
& it’s the right-wing argument to make
For amidst this parliamentary meltdown we mustn’t
Forget that additions to PIP each year
Are the equivalent of a city the size of Leicester
& that is unsustainable
That is unsustainable
Leicester is unsustainable
So every time we talk about the welfare state
Just think of Leicester
Just think of Leicester
& how unsustainable it is
