Conservative's callous attitude to disability benefits underlines the reasons to embrace principles behind universal welfare

Conservative policy is clearly to take away support from all except those in the most absolute despair - and to subject those remaining to demoralising assessments, pressures and sanctions. Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

The Conservative Party unmasked its own callous attitudes towards public welfare at the weekend, when one of Prime Minister Theresa May's aides took it upon himself to say that benefits shouldn't be going to those "taking pills at home, who suffer from anxiety" but to the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017).

After years of climbing uphill, campaigners have finally got mental illness - and the cause of giving it parity with physical illness - into the mainstream consciousness (Cooper, 2016). This comment, coming from a ministerial aide, is a huge step backwards.

It also underlines the inefficacy of the assessments regime, based always on the prejudices of particular governments and liable with its rhetoric, and in pursuit of budget targets, to set high the bar for access to support. And, right now, the Tories are running just such a harsh regime that is rolling back support further and further in the name of purse-tightening.

The compassionate alternative is universality. The idea behind a universal basic income is that everyone would receive a personal independence payment, as a basic safeguard against poverty and as a guarantee of their liberty.

The practical application of the idea, which is still only in the trial stage in a number of countries - where much can still be learned about how it might be shaped for real world use - might well be some time away. But the least we can do is learn from the principles underlying a universal system.

So what are the principles? The premier amongst them is personal freedom, which is hurt most by coercion - being compelled to make certain choices, or accept certain realities, by the absence of a true choice in the face of desperation.

Universality is an act of positive liberty. It seeks to enhance personal liberty by, not simply removing barriers, but reaching out to help people out of the pits that prevent their access - traps like poverty. It creates a welfare system that truly levels the playing field by creating a fundamental baseline.

Even in the modern world, a disability can prove expensive and mental illness, in particular, can be hard to predict and hard to manage. In a world of hyper-competition, that demands flexibility and only offers an insecure return, a person with a disability can easily find themselves out of despair coerced into making choices that are not right for them.

Conservative policy is clearly to take away support from all except those in the most absolute despair - and even then to subject them to neverending assessments, pressures and sanctions that demoralise people and rob them of their dignity.

That policy is an expression of an ideology of 'meritocratic' competition that rewards wealth with privilege and champions individual selfishness - in other words, believes that 'greed is good'. But those who do not 'win' and do not 'merit' privilege are left behind and blamed as the cause of their own failures.

It is that callousness that was revealed by Theresa May's aide. It is a must for progressives to make their voices heard in opposition to this selfish ideology that feeds privilege to the already privileged.

Progressive voices need to be heard too in support of a more compassionate way, that is underlined by the principles of universality - where we value our society based on how it empowers and liberates the least fortunate.

Fear and hatred have found fertile soil amidst the artificial scarcity of austerity

Today sees the latest in a sustained run of demonstrations in the UK since Donald Trump was inaugurated President of the United States. For many progressives, his election has crystallised their anxieties.

They have watched, maybe even supported under the banners of New Labour, years of exclusionary conservative neoliberalism. That system reaped unequal rewards and ultimately unleashed widespread consequences. The austerity that was imposed to manage them has created an artificial scarcity.

Those actions, results and reactions have left some quarters of society - not few in number and faced on all sides by shortfalls and cutbacks in the name of 'scarce' resources - deprived, disregarded and ultimately disaffected. The political disconnect is tangible.

As wary progressives have worried, this fertile ground for fear and anger - prepared under the inattentive rule of those who were too busy enjoying the fruits of the good times to tend or care for it - is now being exploited.

The most virulent of the poisonous crop that has been sewn is xenophobia. That dangerous weed is being grown deliberately in some places and spreading all by itself in others - though it is perhaps reassuring that it must first be dressed up and sold only through distorting and distancing filters, that shows blatant hatred of outsiders, without an 'excuse', is not accepted.

But people are bringing it home. Making it part of their everyday. It would be a toxic mischief to allow the mistrust and hatred of outsiders to be normalised. The frontline against that threat is challenging the negative attitudes towards people seeking refuge or looking for a better life in a new land.

A major part of events will be the 'One Day Without Us' event, a 'labour boycott' by migrants, and those standing in solidarity with them, to demonstrate the value of migrants to our economy - an event months in the planning (Garcia, 2017; Taylor, 2017).

The day was chosen because it coincides with the United Nations World Day of Social Justice. It theme for 2017 is "Preventing conflict and sustaining peace through decent work":

"Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations. We uphold the principles of social justice when we promote gender equality or the rights of indigenous peoples and migrants. We advance social justice when we remove barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability."

Therein lies the inclusive message that has so far run through the opposition to Trump. The exclusivity that the new President stands for is being opposed by a movement for a more egalitarian and inclusive society.

But to create such a society, equality and inclusivity needs to be achieved on an economic as well as social level - and the times seem to be making clear that you really cannot have one without the other.

The anger that stewed within those who felt discarded or ignored, even during the so called 'salad days' when the global economy was booming and Labour was in office, is now fueling a desperate turn inwards that public policy has frequently, if often unwittingly, aided.

Austerity, by slashing public spending, has imposed an artificial scarcity. That sense of a finite limit is being used to fan fears that were more easily assuaged during the years of plenty. Fears of shortage, of limited places and supplies, are forcing people into adopting a triage mentality.

While conservatives talk of austerity in terms of of doing things efficiently to save tax payers some money, myths are spreading, and being spread, about the skivers and the cheats that is feeding sectarian and segregationist mentalities.

These are lines being drawn - borders, classes, and talk of the deserving and the undeserving - and with the fear of scarcity at their backs, no one wants to be on the wrong side of those lines.

After years of exclusion from the gains of globalism, austerity has turned a economic setback into desperation and a society-wide scrambling retreat. Those gathering at today's protests must think carefully on how to reach out with their message, beyond the progressives who will gather around them.

The rise of xenophobia and the rising fear of scarcity have gone hand in hand. Progressives must poke through the propaganda that surrounds the supporters of their opponents and find the desperate people within that noxious cloud and let them know: the choice between aiding our kin and aiding a stranger is a false choice.

Housing White Paper: Government looks only to patch over the Housing Crisis

Last week the government released its "fixing our broken housing market" white paper, with which it promised reforms that would fight market failures with radical measures.

Radical measures are certainly needed. Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis, were the poor and young are excluded, from both ownership and rental, by housing shortages and by what effectively amounts to a self-enriching cartel.

In terms of the shortage, Shelter have said that the gap between housing need and supply is around 150,000 a year, with some estimates putting the shortfall over the past twenty years at 2.5m (Griffiths & Jefferys, 2013; Halligan, 2017).

In his statement, acknowledging that the house price to average income ratios have gone up from 3.5 to 7.5 in the past twenty years, including under the Coalition, Communities Minister Sajid Javid told the House that the government recognised that the drain on people's income that housing - even rental - had become was a huge barrier to social progress (Javid, 2017).

But the excuses crept in quickly: claims that Labour didn't build enough and councils have ducked decisions and don't plan properly. There were also promises, of transparency, of faster construction, of coordinated public investments, to encourage greater innovation by opening the building market beyond the ten companies that build 60% of homes.

Renters were also paid some attention. Javid promised to promote longer-term tenancies, to tackle unfair terms and to improve safeguards - on top of the previous promises to ban agent's fees.

Now, there are two levels of critique for holding a government white paper to account. The first is the thing it promises. Does it contain a good policy? The second is delivery. Does the government have a record of following through and will it do so this time?

As with the government's prized right-to-buy scheme, the government's white paper does not seem to be offering solutions sufficient to deal with the full scale of the problem, although the government at least seems to recognise that there is a serious problem (Easton, 2017). There are some positive steps - if there is follow through. But it all seems like wallpapering over the cracks.

Meanwhile, the government seems content to continue feeding the beast. As when it chose to drain social housing to make up its for sale housing numbers, now it seems intent to just keep things afloat a little longer - build a few more houses, a bit more quickly, with a bit more market competition - and leave the new ideas to someone else.

All of this just shovels more of the UK's precious resources into an extremely greedy fire - as demonstrated by the government pitching houses costing £250,000, even after discounts, for households with combined incomes under £90,000, as 'affordable homes' (BBC, 2017).

As for delivery? In the past six years in office, the house price to average income ratio has continued to grow and the overall increase in housing costs have been extreme (Full Fact, 2015). Waiting lists for social housing remain long and even rental costs, both private and social, are becoming unsustainable.

During the Labour dominated late 1990s and 2000s, house building was usually between 150,000-200,000, falling to between 100,000-150,000 in the later art of the decade before the Conservatives came to office.

The Conservatives made no promises on housebuilding in 2010 and didn't break that pattern. In 2014 there were 125,000 new homes. By 2016, a corner had perhaps been turned. Javid claimed 190,000 were built last year. However, homelessness has also risen sharply, under the impact of private rents and cut to welfare support (BBC, 2017{2}).

In 2015 the Conservatives promised around 475,000 new homes by 2020 - of which about 55,000 a year were to be affordable homes and 40,000 a year were to be starter homes (CPA, 2015). Yet the number of households, by the government's own statistics, is set to rise by more than double their promised housebuilding targets (Full Fact, 2015). And the promised ban on agent's fees has yet to materialise (Collinson & Elgot, 2017).

Neither David Cameron's ministry nor Theresa May's have acted decisively on housing. Both governments plans patched things over and kept just enough houses in circulation on property markets to keep key property owning voters happy.

The reality is that a Conservative government cannot deal with the essential problem: that a cartel of property owners, developers and investors can only justify obscene investments with ever increasing property values and rents - that are utterly unsustainable.

How can a Conservative say no to these people? Well-to-do home owners, profit-making businesses and financial investors? That is basically a list of the key Conservative supporters. So for now, all there will be is a white paper to patch things up.

The Tory Facade: The healthcare crisis in Britain belies the Conservative presentation of their party as responsible stewards

The central claim that the Conservative Party makes, its fundamental promise to the electorate, is that it will be a responsible manager of the state. It tries to present its opponents as reckless ideologues, to be contrasted with their own sensible handling of public duties.

The current condition of the NHS exposes this claim as nothing more than a marketing campaign. The NHS remains the single most popular element of the public apparatus in Britain, even as it has descended into a period of prolonged crisis.

A report released today showed that beds have been filled beyond safe levels in 90% of hospitals over winter, with all the results of overcrowding that follow - in long waiting times and cancellations (Triggle, 2017).

It has been the tendency of the Prime Minister Theresa May at recent renditions of PMQs to deflect blame. On healthcare, her response has been to deflect it to the NHS administrators - claiming bad practice in the use of resources for shortfalls and service delivery (Merrick, 2016).

To back up that claim, the government says it has provided the funding the NHS asked for - but that is a half truth at best. The government has been accused by fact checkers, and Parliament's health committee, of fudging their numbers (Campbell, 2016).

While the government repeats its criticised claims of providing "$10 billion" of extra funds - with the reality being half of that - more parts of Britain's physical, mental health and social care service slide into crisis.

For instance: Social care is critically underfunded (Eichler, 2016). It was not protected from austerity and has been terribly withered by cuts to local government.

The Tories have no 'responsible' remedy. Talk of upfront charges for foreign patients (BBC, 2017), claims of bad practice in administration - these are cheap deflections, taking advantage of anti-immigration myths or falling back on tired austerity.

On social care, the Tories have responded with trivial tax powers for painfully stretched councils. But they will raise more in richer areas and less in poorer, and raise little in either case - only £200m nationally - to counteract the deep cuts that have ravaged the social care infrastructure (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

Standing back and observing the Conservative stewardship of health and social care, brings one of only two conclusions: incompetence or ideologically driven mismanagement. Whether deliberate or due to incompetence, the NHS is being undermined.

The public stood behind last year's strikes by junior doctors. But the pressure remains and continues to build. Progressives must start to dismantle the façade and show people the reality of the Conservative Party behind the marketing image.

The future of health and social care in Britain depends upon the public understanding its worth and seeing with their own eyes the devastating impact that Tory policies have had on this iconic symbol of progress in Britain.