ONCE again, Britain has abandoned its disabled citizens. In a recent press conference, Rishi Sunak began his bid for the election with a speech on “sicknote culture,” where he blamed the country’s problems on the disabled.

This came just a few weeks after a report from the UN that detailed the dire state of disability rights in Britain. To top it off, as with every other minority group that needs his support, Keir Starmer has joined the Conservative pile-on. Having lost the left and the right, the need for a disabled revolution has never been clearer.
 
Sunak’s plans to “reform,” or perhaps more accurately, decimate, disability welfare are based on the principle of reducing the income of disabled people, a group more likely than average to live in poverty.

It’s a shameless appeal to the Tory voter who believes too many disabled people are living a life of luxury on other workers’ hard-earned taxes. If only it were true. In fact, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ latest report has accused Britain of failing its disabled citizens.

The report identifies issues like an alarming number of “benefit deaths,” a cruel and penalising Work Capability Assessment (WCA), and inadequate social security payments — all matters that would be exacerbated by Sunak’s reforms.

The policies have no basis in reality; they are nothing but an age-old tradition of scapegoating from a man who feels his power slipping away. If he really wanted to increase the government’s Budget, taxing billionaires like his wife might be a more obvious route.
 
The changes proposed include making sicknotes harder to obtain; the replacement of personal independence payments (PIP) with a voucher scheme; and swapping benefits for treatments. Together, they make the word disabled synonymous with burden.

But this position is nothing new. In fact, in its report, the UN stated that the government’s language consistently “devalues” disabled people, often painting them as “undeserving” of welfare. And while Sunak’s chances of implementing these reforms remain, much like his chances of winning the election, very low, they are still consequential.

According to the UN, this rhetoric has caused “hate speech and hostility” towards disabled people, with its report stating that disability-related hate crimes have increased.
 
Sunak’s proposed reforms would be a little less insulting if the current welfare scheme wasn’t so severe. For decades, disabled people have described the tortuous, humiliating hoops that we are made to jump through, only to receive completely arbitrary rulings.

Indeed, as of September 2023, 70 per cent of rejected PIP cases were overturned at a tribunal. And if you’re lucky enough to be rewarded PIP, the UN committee still found it to be “insufficient.”

It also deemed the WCA process to be “complex and onerous,” with “inexperienced and/or unqualified” assessors. Inadequate welfare has great costs for a country, and I’m not referring to its economy.

Instead, I’m talking about one of the richest countries in the world having a phenomenon of “benefit deaths,” a recent horrific pattern of disabled people being put in such a desperate situation after having their benefit application denied that they resort to suicide.

In its report, the UN links an estimated 600 suicides to the government’s reforms of the WCA. Nonetheless, these are the scroungers on which Sunak has decided to pin his election hopes.
 
Luckily, this is all just noise because the Labour Party will come in and save the day, right? Wrong.

In fact, despite their 30-point lead, Starmer has once again proven himself to be a Tory in a red jumper. In response to Sunak’s press conference, Labour has parroted Conservative talking points, stating the need for the “staggeringly high” benefit bill to “come down.”

Furthermore, Labour’s acting shadow work and pensions secretary, Alison McGovern, asserted that “every aspect” of disability welfare should “help people get into work.” I’d thought that disability welfare was about ensuring disabled people lead happy, meaningful lives, but clearly, that was a misunderstanding.

Starmer has gutted Labour into a party that’s indistinguishable from its alleged opposition. But what remains clear is that, for some time now, the disabled have been unable to rely on them for support. And without the left’s backing, we’re on our own.
 
But, as a group, we’ve had to become pretty good at sticking up for ourselves. Every right that we have is something we’ve won independently. So, at a time like this, rather than waiting for Starmer’s support, I instead look back on history at the disabled people who fought to give me the life I have today.

I think about how my rights are enshrined in the Equality Act of 2010 due to groups like Rights NOW! and the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network. I think about how I can use the bus in my wheelchair because of the work done by the Campaign for Accessible Transport and the Buses for All campaign.

I think of the Block Telethon protests of the ’90s, whose “piss on pity” slogan changed the representation of disabled folks forever. I think of the fight that disabled people have had to take at every turn when those in power have abandoned us, and I know that the time has come again.
 
We need to learn from our disabled elders; we need to organise; we need to fight; we need to show the government that we will not just lie down and take it. We need a disabled revolution.
 
Cordelia Price is a disabled writer, activist, and founder of a campaign to improve the accessibility of music venues. You can find their work at cripthegig.co.uk.