There is a shameful British tradition of demonising disabled people. Why is Labour reigniting it? | Frances Ryan

Whether it’s the front pages or your Uncle Frank’s Facebook posts, you’ll have done well lately to avoid news about upcoming disability benefits cuts. After months of speculation, the government is reportedly set to pull £6bn from the “welfare budget” ahead of its spring statement, with some Labour MPs already threatening revolt.

Read much of the commentary and you’d believe this was all about the public purse – see talk about “savings” and changing “global factors” such as trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine. And yet, dig a little deeper and Labour’s proposed reforms appear to be based not just on budgeting, but a belief: paid work is a virtue (and people who don’t perform it deserve a worse life than everyone else). As Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, said last week: “There is a moral case here for making sure that people who can work are able to work.”

Since taking office last summer, Keir Starmer has made work a central tenet of the new government. At a time when the number of people off sick long-term is at a record high, the prime minister’s repeated use of the phrase “working people” has not exactly been subtle.

This has never just been about arguing work is the best way to pay the bills – it is about painting it as a virtue in the pursuit of economic growth. Just look at how a recent PR video for the government’s Keep Britain Working review refers to disabilities as “work-limiting conditions”. It is a rebranding of distress, where, say, Parkinson’s is not a painful illness that affects human beings but an obstacle that prevents arms from stacking shelves for shareholders.

Even Labour’s NHS reforms and health policies have been framed in terms of getting people back into the labour market, with ministers pondering weight-loss jabs for unemployed people and work coaches visiting patients on mental health wards. It is reminiscent of a “your country needs you” recruitment poster, where the long-term sick are expected to battle through the pain for the sake of the taxpayer. Under Labour, health is a prerequisite – not for a good life for yourself, but to be a good worker for the nation.

This is hardly a new narrative. Back in 1834, the poor laws saw the “deserving poor” sent to the workhouses to be housed and fed in exchange for gruelling labour. More than 150 years later, New Labour cut single mothers’ benefits to nudge them into work under the principle that the state should start “demanding more of individuals”. And who could forget the coalition government that pegged £10bn of cuts to the “welfare bill” on the moral mission to target so-called scroungers who – as the then chancellor George Osborne notoriously put it – have their “blinds down” in the morning while strivers go to work.

Fast forward a decade and it is clear these ideas are taking hold again, from institutions and the press to social media. When the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange published a report last week – backed by former Labour work and pensions secretary Lord Blunkett – calling for a regressive overhaul of disability benefits, it notably did so on the basis that the system wasn’t working fiscally, technically “or morally”. Even the seemingly neutral term “economically inactive”, which has entered the lexicon in recent years, is morally loaded, defining human beings by whether they add value to the economy or are – literally – inactive.

Of course, all of this speaks to the nature of work under capitalism. It exploits workers for profit while claiming only those who labour – not the unemployed – will get improved material conditions. It ignores the reality that much work is unfulfilling and hard, and in 2025 increasingly fails to meet basic living costs. Instead, this moral case for work creates a vision of a benevolent boss class gifting the joy of a 9-to-5 to the masses. As the current work and pensions chief, Liz Kendall, said in January, getting disabled people into employment gives them “purpose”.

But it also evokes – and fuels – specific prejudices about disabled people that go far beyond the Labour party. The same arguments that equate “productivity” with a person’s value have long been used to portray those who can’t earn a wage due to disability as a burden on the working population. Every time you see a headline on “the cost of the benefits bill”, what you are really reading is “the cost of disabled people”. That Labour’s reforms reportedly include raising the universal credit basic rate for those looking for or in work, while cutting it for those judged as unfit to work, is a particularly blatant message. Such policy casts individuals who “overcome” their condition to work as worthy, and those who fail to as just not trying hard enough.

It is why any drives to get disabled people into work always go hand in hand with a punitive benefits system, despite all evidence showing such measures are counterproductive. As Nick Ferrari told LBC listeners last week (while making mock crying sounds, no less): people on benefits who are deemed not to be looking for work should get more “hassle” from job coaches and their money docked – as long as they’ve “got use of [their] arms”. If work brings moral reward, unemployment comes with punishment.

In this context, Labour’s refusal to introduce a wealth tax to meet costs is less a temporary outrage and more a natural extension of the status quo. We should all know the rules of the game by now: in a culture that equates wealth with respect, and productivity with value, rich and healthy people are applauded as hard-working and deserving, while poor and sick people are demonised as idle and unworthy. Before you know it, a Labour government is choosing – and it is a choice – to take money from disabled benefit claimants rather than tax high earners. You might ask, is that the moral thing to do?

• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist. Her latest book, Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life, is available to pre-order at the Guardian Bookshop