You’d perhaps be mistaken for thinking the big political stories of recent days came from the Labour Party. Whilst Keir Starmer attempted to blow smoke up the TUC’s arse and many of Labour were showing they had no backbone and so were going to let pensioners freeze to death were sad, nothing came close to the tragedy that struck the Conservative Party. Over in the Tory leadership battle, a valiant hero fell as none other than this columnist’s favourite, Mel Stride, was the latest to be knocked out of the race.
HAHAHAHA THE WET WIPE GOT BINNED
Sorry for worrying you all there, as a long-time hater of Mel Stride this was of course the best news of my life.
The dangerous little wet wipe has had his hopes of ruling the Tory party dashed, as he got just 16 votes in this round. While that might seem small that’s only because there are gloriously barely any Tory MPs left. The winner in that round Robert Jenrick only got 33 votes.
So in honour of our fave little wet wipe’s departure, here’s a best bits round up. If you want Mel, you can imagine this is a Strictly montage as you’ll unfortunately still have to warm the opposition benches and can’t pursue your real dream of media luvvie a la Balls just yet.
Stab-vest-o-clock
Although Mel was made DWP chief wet wipe in October 2022, I first became aware of his true absurdity when he donned a stab vest in May 2023. This was during that truly incredible time when the then-minister for disabled people Tom Pursglove was cutting about like the shittest Liam Neeson ever, and filming dawn benefits raids. Not one to miss out on some public humiliation, Mel Stride had to get in on the action.
Soundtracked by seemingly those video piracy ads from the 00s, and interspersed with flashy images of police dogs, Stride told criminals “DON’T” like some disappointed deputy headteacher. He told the Sun he had “the determination of Ted Hastings” and that “Sun readers don’t expect our benefits system to be abused”:
Yeahhh but Sun readers also believed Freddie Starr ate someone’s hamster, so it’s not a high bar.
WCA cruelty from Mel Stride
One of the cruellest things Mel Stride is responsible for is the truly callous proposed changes to the work capability assessment. The changes would see 440,000 people lose their benefits as they could be deemed fit for work despite previously being told they had limited capability for work.
Stride aimed to fix this in two ways: the first not allowing doctors to write sick notes anymore because they were apparently too close to their patients. Which is hilarious when GP appointments are like gold dust around here.
The even more bullshit solution was that apparently all disabled people can work from home. Last September he told the Commons:
The Work Capability Assessment doesn’t reflect how someone with a disability or health condition might be able to work from home, yet we know many disabled people do just that.
However he of course cherry-picked these answers.
20% of people in the ESA Support Group or on the Universal Credit LCWA element said they “would like to work at some point in the future”. This however ignored the 80% who said they wouldn’t or couldn’t. There was also the fact that just 4% of people said they felt they would be able to work now if the right job and the right support were available. But those are just semantics to an evil bastard like Stride.
Truly disgusting rhetoric
Speaking of being disgusting to disabled people, Mel Stride is responsible for some of the worst rhetoric about us in a long time. He particularly took aim at people with mental health conditions who he thought were all just being softies
sometimes everyday anxieties are being labelled as medical problems, and that isn’t right
You mean like the anxieties of having your benefits taken away and starving to death? There were also bizarre claims at one point about curing long-term conditions.
But his worst words were saved for unemployed disabled people. In his regular Telegraph column he was responsible for headlines such as “Epidemic of long-term sick leave is stifling the economy” and let’s not forget how much he furthered the media’s love of calling us all shirkers.
Whatever the fuck happened with PIP and vouchers
His most batshit and scariest time at the DWP was when he was just throwing ideas about for PIP and going with whatever stuck. The worst of these was the idea that disabled people on PIP don’t actually need money. No, they could survive on vouchers or invoice the department.
Only someone who has never relied on benefits would suggest vouchers when many disabled people use PIP to pay their bills and buy food. But you’ve got to be horrifically conceited about how well your department is being run if you think the DWP could handle thousands of invoices a week.
The car crash of Mel Stride’s WorkWell
As part of the Tory re-election campaign, Mel Stride starred in a truly horrific video where he declared:
Join me on the road for the next generation of welfare reforms. We’ll be making a few stops along the way!
Hilariously this came the week after I’d started a column with “all aboard the hating disabled people bus” and it seemed Mel had completely stolen my work. Where I’d said the first stop taking away sicknotes he went “full throttle” towards a little fit notes layby.
WorkWell itself was a proposed four sessions of physio and a meeting with a counsellor, but it’s not worse than Labour’s plan to put work coaches in therapists’ offices.
Telling the world he cares but too chicken to face disabled people
During his tenure, Mel Stride had plenty of chance to engage with disabled people, but that would of course mean having to hear how dangerous his plans were – and quite frankly he didn’t care about that.
The Disability Action Plan (DAP) and National Disability Strategy (NDS) both went down like lead balloons, mainly because they do fuck all to actually help us, but particularly because there was no engagement with disability action groups. The DAP which focussed on the short-term cared more about playgrounds and the Special Olympics than tangible things to support us.
Meanwhile, the government were taken to court by disabled activists over the NDS and it was found unlawful as it hadn’t sought to consult disabled people fully or give us long enough to complete the consultation.
Then there’s the fact that when the government were given the opportunity to prove what they were really doing for disabled people in front of the UN, Mel decided he couldn’t be bothered. This is despite the fact he was in Paris the day before, one of the stopovers on the way to Geneva.
The Great Wet Wipe Media Tour of Summer 2024
Before Brat Summer was a twinkle in Charli XCX’s eye, Mel Stride was having what my best friend dubbed as his own Twat Summer all over our TVs and radios. While everyone else deserted the Tory Party, Stridey boy was there front and centre.
In one morning alone at the end of June he showed up at Times Radio, GB News, Sky News, and BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4, LBC, and GMB (Heyyyy Macarena).
His incredible gaffs along the way on his media tour included telling Nick Ferrari “It isn’t for me to start announcing policy on the hoof”, having to attempt to defend the batshit national service “plan” and trying to turn the nation against Martin Lewis. He also thought he was clever naming Starmer “no idea Keir” and incredibly saying that PPE was inevitable.
Back off into irrelevancy for you Mel Stride
Unfortunately for Mel Stride, whilst he lost the leadership race theres no Strictly sambaing off into the sunset yet. While his party went down in flames he won his seat again by a whopping 61 votes, so he’ll be stuck pretending to oppose Starmer and Kendall’s Tory-red plans for the next four years. Who knows mate, maybe one day you’ll be a Pointless answer, I’d make a joke here about you already being pointless but it’s really too easy.
But I’ll leave you all with possibly my favourite thing that has ever happened to Stride, and this time I mean this sincerely. If you haven’t seen this already, I present to you, the General Erection
Anyone else looking forward to the general erection? pic.twitter.com/gyikxOyX7Q
— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) May 3, 2024
Feature image via the Canary
