Budget reactions from centrists show their lack of care for anyone

  • Post last modified:October 30, 2024
  • Reading time:6 mins read


Rachel Reeves’s much-anticipated Autumn Budget has arrived – and the Starmerroids are happy, which should be almost as big as any red flag you see on Married At First Sight. Because while the Labour Party has, on the face of it, left their comfortable lives untouched – it’s a different story for the rest of us.

Supertanskiii: WhAtS a BuDgEt?

Everyone’s favourite Labour Party apologist Supertanskiii (real name: who cares?) was the epitome of centrist indifference to chronically ill, disabled, homeless, and non-working people. First, she concluded that the Autumn Budget meant “no regular people are getting fucked”:

Supertanskiii’s one politically-educated brain cell was clearly on half term this week. Or, she was simply sprouting Labour Party propaganda. Because within the Autumn Budget, we saw:

  • 450,000 chronically ill and disabled people eventually losing health-related benefits thanks to Labour adopting Tory-designed changes to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Work Capability Assessment (WCA).
  • A further crackdown on the overblown idea of benefit fraud.
  • Just £707 per household who are currently homeless to try and get them permanent accommodation.
  • 50% increase in the bus fare cap.
  • A less-than 2% rise in benefit rates in April – maintaining nearly a decade of real-terms cuts.
  • Nothing for unpaid carers who cannot work due to their caring commitments.
  • Just £600m for social care – dwarfed just by the extra £800m councils spent on child services alone last year, for example.
  • Continuing the Tory-designed “settlement” for housing associations – letting them increase rents in line with inflation plus 1%.

We could go on – but the point is the Autumn Budget was NOT a budget for the poorest people. It was a budget for Supertanskiii and her ilk. You can see that by the way she shut down someone raising concerns over chronically ill and disabled people:

tHe GrOwN uPs ArE bAcK

But what did the other centrist grown ups in their Ivory Towers think of the Autumn Budget? Helpfully, Supertanskiii gave us a veritable YouGov opinion poll via her X:

Many of the responses were predictable:

Some people clearly haven’t got a fucking clue (it was £500m for ‘affordable housing’ which, BTW, is not social housing):

Others got emotional – clearly forgetting chronically ill, disabled, homeless, and poor people exist:

And if you’re playing ‘Centrist Dullard Bingo’, then dab ‘the grown ups are back in charge’:

A budget for them, not for the rest of us

But then, why would Supertanskiii and her followers care about the poorest and most marginalised people in society? As long as they’re all right, and their grift can continue, then ‘Shush! Don’t mention disabled people!’

We say grift, because Supertanskiii is a grifter. There can be no other reason as to why she would claim that “no regular people are getting fucked” and take herself seriously while doing it.

Of course, this was all entirely predictable – as the Canary has been documenting. If Labour had been truly serious on resetting the UK, then they would have started by punching up, not down – and ensuring that our society’s most marginalised and poorest citizens were lifted up before anyone else. Of course, that’s not how capitalist economics works.

So, they didn’t – and we knew they wouldn’t anyway.

Yet it doesn’t make it any less palatable.

It will now be down to grassroots campaign groups, sympathetic politicians, and independent media to hold the Labour government to account – because Supertanskiii and the rest of the middle classes certainly aren’t going to do it.

Featured image via the Canary





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