Sunak Vows to Slash Support for Vulnerable Despite Tanking Economy

Rishi Sunak has just unveiled his newest wheeze to slam struggling workers: stripping benefits from the disabled and mentally ill.

That’s right – after obliterating the economy and NHS, this silver-spoon sluggard believes the real problem is sick people getting too much help. In his latest speech, Sunak declared war on the working class, vowing to crush support for those unable to work due to disability or depression.

Nevermind skyrocketing rents, shrinking paychecks, and NHS waiting lists bursting at the seams thanks to his policies. Sunak thinks the solution is to take away their lifelines and tell depressed people to simply cheer up and get back to work.

This proves beyond doubt that Sunak lives in an alternate reality detached from the real world suffering of regular people. While he lounges in luxury palaces avoiding tax, citizens choose between food or heating. But lecture them he does, blaming economic victims for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps that he cut off.

Sunak’s days fleecing citizens while blaming them for their plight are numbered. The nation will celebrate the inevitable downfall of this joker who thinks clobbering the disadvantaged wins votes. He will be hoisted by his own petard soon enough.

Sunak Targets Sick and Disabled in Cruel New Welfare Reform

Rishi Sunak strode to the podium, a smug smile plastered across his face. As the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he was preparing to deliver yet another speech blaming the working class for problems his own government had created.

This had become a pattern over the years – Tory governments wrecking the economy and public services, then turning around and scolding those suffering the consequences as if they were personally responsible.

Rishi Sunak wants to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work as part of a plan to tackle what he calls the UK’s “sick note culture”. The prime minister claims benefits have become a “lifestyle choice” for some, causing a “spiralling” welfare bill.

He also outrageously said: “We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t.”

Sunak launched into his remarks, using the phrase “sick note culture” as if the working class had suddenly decided en masse to malinger and stop working. As if they weren’t responding rationally to disastrous economic policies, soaring NHS waiting lists, and the longest, deepest fall in living standards on record. No, according to Sunak, the Surgeon General had apparently just issued a public health warning about a contagious outbreak of bone-idleness.

But the reality is far different from Sunak’s distorted portrayal. Since the pandemic, the number of people out of work due to long-term sickness has risen significantly, reaching 2.8 million in February 2024. NHS data shows almost 11 million fit notes were issued just last year, with 94% deeming the recipient unfit for work.

This massive increase is a direct result of the NHS crisis caused by Tory underfunding and austerity cuts. Waiting lists for treatment have soared to record highs under the Conservatives’ watch.

Over 7 million people are now stuck languishing on lists for planned operations and procedures. For mental health services alone, 1.9 million people are desperately waiting for the treatment they need.

With the NHS barely limping along, it’s no wonder more people are too ill to work. But Sunak pretends they are simply lazy malingerers looking for an excuse. In reality, crumbling public services and stripped social safety nets are leaving the sick with little choice but to seek sick notes when work is impossible.

The impact is clearest for those with mental health struggles, who make up a large share of the rising disabled and ill. Years of cuts have left mental health budgets woefully scarce relative to demand.

According to the British Medical Association, services need an extra £2.9 billion a year just to properly meet needs. Without treatment for depression, anxiety, and other conditions, people cannot simply will themselves well.

Yet Sunak continues implying they are shirkers looking for handouts. That those who work must resent their neighbours relying on sick notes and benefits. This us versus them mentality fiendishly obscures who is really to blame.

Sunak and his party crashed the economy with austerity and gutted the NHS with privatisation schemes. They now stand back, shrug, and point fingers at the victims of their own policies.

The notion that only the lazy or worthless end up on disability is not just insulting, but detached from reality. Any of us could suffer an accident or diagnosis making work impossible. And systemic failures at the top, not personal flaws at the bottom, are driving more people to that point. Sunak’s attempts to villainize and gaslight struggling citizens only serve to highlight his own callousness.

The truth is, it takes a special kind of arrogance to crash the economy, wreck the NHS, and then blame those left unemployed and uncared for. A level of sneering contempt for regular people that only the most elite leaders can muster.

Elitist Who Doesn’t Care About The Working Class

Sunak himself is worth over £200 million, owns numerous luxury properties, and has never faced a day of economic hardship in his privileged life. Yet he stands there scolding the poor for not heroically working through illness and poverty.

Let’s examine the actual facts. Since the Tories came to power in 2010, they have gutted public spending in the name of austerity. Local council budgets have been decimated, stripping away vital services like youth centers, libraries, and support for disability charities. The NHS has been chronically underfunded, leaving it unable to cope with the needs of an aging population. Social security has been tightened to the point of cruelty, where people can’t afford food or heating but are sanctioned for being pennies over arbitrary benefit caps.

Is it any wonder, then, that more people are out of work sick or disabled? Sunak pretends as if people simply woke up one day and decided to suddenly start abusing sick notes. In reality, draconian benefit policies and under resourced healthcare are leaving them with little choice.

Even the middle class are not immune from the impacts of Sunak’s misguided policies. Wage growth stagnated under his administration while costs of living skyrocketed. Household debt piled up as incomes failed to keep pace with rising prices over the last two years of Sunak’s economic incompetence. Now mortgages are rapidly increasing right alongside inflation, fueling a crisis of job insecurity and eroding people’s savings.

And the notion that people on benefits are living a cushy lifestyle shows similar ignorance. Benefits have been systematically gutted since 2010, to the point where families are regularly skipping meals, rationing heating, and relying on food banks just to survive.

People have died from benefit sanctions for minor infractions like being 5 minutes late to appointments. Many disabled people cannot even cover basic living costs like rent, transportation, and medical supplies on current payment rates.

Beyond speeches, Tory policies back up their disdain for the vulnerable. Consider Sunak’s plan to take away power over sick notes from GPs and hand it to bureaucrats at the DWP instead.

This risks making the process more about cutting costs than patient health. It corrodes the trust between doctor and patient by inserting government monitors into private health matters. And it empowers ministers obsessed with slashing disability benefits over doctors devoted to their patients’ wellbeing. The cruelty is the point, despite claims of compassion.

It all underscores the need for systemic reform to undo forty years of austerity and privatization. Things like raising taxes on the wealthy, funding the NHS properly, building affordable housing, and making benefits adequate to live on.

None of which Sunak has an interest in doing. It’s easier for him to just rail against supposed cultural ills like sick note culture than fix the massive problems his government created in the first place.

Easier, but also revealing. The more Sunak blames workers, the clearer it becomes who his government actually serves. Not the roofers and retail clerks, nurses and Uber drivers struggling to survive as costs rise.

But the privileged few hoarding wealth and power at the top. To them, the poor are mere unwanted clutter, messy lives to be swept out of view. A sick note is not just paperwork, but evidence that economic violence has real human costs.

The more people who speak that truth by claiming paltry benefits, the more it threatens the callous lies Sunak is selling.