The vile corporate media has started trotting out the face of its benefit scrounger narrative: Marie Buchan. Disgracefully naming a single mum claiming benefits, “Britain’s Welfare Queen”, a series of gutter outlets and This Morning have been pushing her story to tar claimants with its broad, fraud-painting brush. Of course, it’s uncanny timing, as Keir Starmer and the newly Labour-led Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cranks up its benefit claimant-bashing and back-to-work agenda.
Needless to say, the corporate press’s move is a shameless ploy to reinforce the new government’s ruthless welfare rhetoric. However, it’s also a disgusting display of the right-wing media’s misogynistic, and predatory vilification of claimants – including the woman they’ve used to spin their toxic bile.
This Morning takes on the DWP… kind of
On Monday 30 September, ITV’s This Morning put out a segment interviewing a woman claiming DWP welfare.
Hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley spoke to Marie Buchan, a single mum who vile right-wing rags have dubbed “Britain’s Welfare Queen”.
The basic thrust of the programme revolved around grilling Buchan over her supposed “life of luxury” on benefits.
They quizzed her on her use of benefits to pay for things like cosmetic surgery and a horse. Of course, the implication is that here’s a benefit claimant living in the lap of luxury – and if she is, others must be too.
Obviously, this is nothing like the reality for the vast majority of claimants. It might come as a surprise to the right-wing foghorns, but no, people aren’t buying horses and paying for their upkeep on their vital benefits.
Although, you know who has used thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to heat their horses’ stable? Former Tory chancellor and MP Nadhim Zahawi.
Meanwhile, back in the real-world, nearly half of Universal Credit claimants are behind on their bills. Many can’t afford even the most basic essentials as the DWP repeatedly implement real-terms pay-cuts, all while the cost of living soars. Put simply, there’s nothing luxurious about the lowest social security benefits in Northern Europe.
Propping up Starmer’s back-to-work agenda
Speaking of equines, Marie Buchan is clearly the so-called benefit “scrounger” trojan horse for punching down on DWP claimants en masse.
On YouTube, ITV has titled the show:
‘I Regret Using My Benefits on a Boob Job and a Horse’
And its description says it all:
She’s been dubbed Britain’s ‘welfare queen’. Over the past decade, Marie Buchan has been accused of using taxpayers’ money to splash out on pricey cosmetic surgery – and even her own horse. But after spending most of her adult life living off the state, the mum-of-eight is joining us to explain why she’s ready to leave the benefits system behind – and finally get a job. Plus she’ll be revealing the truth about her so-called ‘life of luxury’.
What stands out here – and in the interview itself – is the emphasis on Buchan going back to work. Ultimately, this is what the programme was all about.
It ties in just perfectly with Starmer and the DWP’s recent drivel. The latest incarnation of this crap was Starmer’s speech at the Labour Party’s conference. It had just about everything in the benefit claimant-bashing handbook. Crackdown on fraud? Check. Conflation of chronically ill and disabled claimants with this? He didn’t skip a beat.
Unsurprisingly then, the This Morning segment hasn’t been the only piece on Buchan in the last week. There’s a truly despicable article in the shitrag the Sun from 24 September. Then, the Metro followed suit on the 25 September.
We can spare you your far-better spent time reading these pieces. They’re a written replica of This Morning’s show. And tellingly, the Sun places Buchan in the context of the 9.4 million people not in work, and the 2.8 million people unemployed due to long-term sickness.
Naturally, the programme and articles also skirted over the fact that many people are claiming benefits while also working too. To do so would be to open the can of worms the government and its shills in the corporate press don’t want to address. The criminally low minimum wage, alongside parasitic capitalist employers who are exploiting workers on paltry poverty pay.
Story not adding up either
Setting the corporate media and government’s agenda aside, Marie Buchan’s story also quite simply doesn’t add up anyway.
Originally, Buchan was claiming child benefits and tax credits. Now, the DWP have moved her onto Universal Credit as part of its migration process from old-style benefits.
However, since 2017, the Tories have had the two-child limit on benefits in place. Yet, even before this, there’s no way those benefits would have been enough for Buchan to afford her horse, cosmetic surgery, and other luxury expenses.
The Sun article said that across 23 years, her annual income:
fluctuated between £26,000 and £37,000.
So – around or slightly above the UK’s median wage. The horror of someone getting this to support eight children.
Again though, this doesn’t track, given that since 2013 the benefit cap has restricted the total amount of benefits claimants could get. Crucially, in 2016, this was £20,000 outside London – which would have applied to Birmingham-based Buchan.
In other words, her income evidently doesn’t all come from her benefits. What’s more, the article confirmed that Buchan hasn’t worked since 2017, when she was a part-time carer. So, this additional income must be coming from somewhere else.
Overall, though, its none of ours – or your – business what Buchan spends her benefits on. Moreover, some of the comments from people on social media about her were vile and misogynistic, at best.
A pretext for more brutal DWP benefit cuts
However, at the end of the day, it’s all a pretext-setting exercise laying the groundwork for Labour’s sweep of brutal benefit cuts, and punitive clampdowns.
Marie Buchan’s story absolutely isn’t representative of the lived realities for benefit claimants. And of course, that is the point – the corporate media have brought her out to cement the idea that she is. Its framing is precisely to make out that people on benefits are abusing the system.
But it’s more than this. Buchan herself is a victim of these abhorrent hit pieces too. Ultimately, it has used her as a stick to beat all benefit claimants with. All the while, it has put her in the firing line for abuse as well.
The outlets have portrayed Buchan precisely how they want you to see her. Her story – and this malicious framing – have been bouncing around for years.
Here’s a This Morning interview with her from SEVEN years ago. In fact, according to another Sun article, she has been in and out of the headlines for over a decade now. During this time, the right-wing corporate media have wheeled her out a number of times to opine her gilded life on benefits.
This is the right-wing gutter press doing what it does best. Its client journalists want you to play the blame game and point the finger at anyone but them or the government. It wants the public to see scroungers wherever people claim social security.
Alongside this, it wants welfare claimants to blame Buchan for the state’s punitive, repressive reforms. No one should fall for it. When shit hits the fan, we must all remember who’s really to blame – this time, the new Labour government and its dutiful press lapdogs preying on public, for private profiteering ends.
Feature image via YouTube – This Morning
