EXPOSED: Is this Reform UK's threat to benefit claimants?

Right, so whilst the Tories make wild claims, such as the DWP Minister talking about disabled people, misleading the public by saying they are getting thousands of pounds a month when really they just need a grab rail, or with Rishi Sunak promising more reforms to the benefit system because the bill is too high, ignoring the fact its 14 years of Tory rule making so many people sick. When Sunak talks of reform he’s simply talking about getting a bigger stick and throwing more people entitled to support off it, because that’s the kind of depraved creature he is, a social conscience colder than a polar bear’s nutsack combined with a national popularity and likeability factor that’s in the same region as nappy rash.
But as harsh and cruel as they are, if you think Reform UK are likely to be any better, then the opinion of Reform UK leader Richard Tice’s partner in the Torygraph today, should make you think twice, because surely her opinions are representative of the party she’s clearly so closely tied to?
Right, so Isabel Euphemia Oakeshott, for it is she, partner of private company masquerading as a political party Reform UK leader, the permagrinning, permatanned businessman Richard Tice, has in yet another attack on those on benefits, of which she knows absolutely nothing, cannot relate, cannot understand, cannot appreciate the difficulties of living on because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, penned a piece in the Torygraph entitled: ‘Get benefit claimants back to work – cleaning our filthy streets.’ Let’s jump on the Tories bandwagon and why not, Reform are after all, just another bunch of Tories, the type that for them, the Tory Party are too left wing these days. According to Oakeshott the rubbish on our streets is now piling up so high in steaming piles of goodness knows what that she has to apparently play hopscotch to get around it. She cannot abide, does not understand it, after all apparently the streets in Dubai shine when she goes there and when you see litter there it’s a noteworthy event. Slow news day then? You must have gone when the weather was better. Why are our streets dirtier? Apparently it’s alcohol that is to blame, we’re all drunks in comparison it seems and that is why. Where is the civic pride she moans as she bleats about we the proles who throw our kebabs in the gutter and throw up on the streets. It must be true after all, because the Leeanderthal, Lee Anderson took a photograph of an alleyway with black bags piled up and he’s never staged a thing in his life after all…apart from getting his mate to act as a punter when he was filmed electioneering, or making a mockery of poverty with his 30p meals, though of course Oakeshott once said those in poverty could live on porridge because oats are cheap.
Fundamentally, this is someone with a background wealthy enough to have been sent to a prestigious private school, where it’s £17K a term to be sent there, choosing to lecture poor people about being poor. Povertysplaining to those in poverty I guess you could call it.
She is linked to Reform UK though, as she’s the partner of Richard Tice, himself a multimillionaire property developer, so again, fully knowledgeable about life in poverty and when his partner is spilling her guts in the paper basically saying there’s work to be had for benefit claimants if they really wanted it and we should be making them work if they can because the narrative is always one of living on benefits being a lifestyle choice, when if either of this gruesome pair had the slightest inkling of actually living on them, they’d realise it is anything but. I suppose those foodbank lines are people choosing to be that poor they have to access food in that way? You can afford some porridge if you clean our drains though eh Isabel.
She was on Question Time last November and made the claim that people on benefits are just mucking around:
Even disabled people are not safe to her mind, so would they be under Reform UK?
Of course it totally ignores the fact many people forced to foodbanks are already in work, that many people claiming benefits are in work as well, including many disabled people, but the support keeps getting cut, withdrawn, and instead of acknowledging that, it’s all about these people that are apparently lead swinging, because there are so many people out of work, they cite figures of 5m on their website, that that can’t possibly be right, they can’t possibly all be ill, there has to be an issue here and if that is the kind of mindset of Reform UK and it’s leadership, well in what way are they really saying anything different to what Rishi Sunak and Mel Stride have been on the last week or so?
Anyway, I thought I’d go onto Reform UK’s website to see if there was anything along the lines of benefit reform plans laid out yet and I found this document on there, they have a policy page, with four documents, one devoted to healthcare, another to Starmergeddon, and a working draft of a social contract I suppose you could call it, but there was another there called Reform is Essential, which, although it didn’t have anything particularly benefits orientated on the face of it, I thought this was probably the best one to go and have a dig through. It’s only 16 pages, most of it devoted to lowering taxes and bashing migrants, but there were a few choice nuggets in here and when I introduced this video as being along the lines of are Isabel Oakeshott’s rancid Torygraph musings akin to Reform UK policy, is that what she’s subliminally peddling here, well, I might not have been all that far off.
There’s not a lot on benefits here, its focused on doing one thing somewhere else in order to get people back into work, kind of thinking.
So let’s get into it. According to Reform UK, there are 1.5m more people on benefits since the pandemic and they desire a return to pre 2019 levels of benefit claims, feeling this is too high. Nowhere do they seemingly ask themselves why that number rose through the pandemic, they can’t quite seem to grasp that people might have got ill and are still suffering the ill effects of illness. There’s this thing called Long Covid for starters, ever heard of it? I tell what they have heard of, Vaccine injury! Tice and Co want an inquiry into THAT. Now all vaccines carry a risk of adverse side effects and inevitably these can be severe, but the narrative that these jabs which literally saved lives, were inherently dangerous is just garbage, it’s dangerous talk and its why we’re seeing rises in things like measles again now. The consequences of catching the disease outweigh any risk of complications from a jab. Now if for example Reform UK are so obsessed with people being made ill by the jab though, does that not show you that more people are ill due to the pandemic from another point of view though? A nonsense one, but if you believe it, then your own policy idea is still undermined is it not?
Of course being Reform UK, they had to shoehorn in immigration to their benefit reform plans, and according to their document here, they believe a zero tolerance approach to immigration – only allowing in the same number of people that emigrate each year, and ensuring they are only the skilled people we need – will raise low wages and encourage people to take up work when they aren’t currently. So by that rationale, you’re still saying everyone on benefits, is there out of choice then? By definition that must be what you think, because how else do you tie more vacancies and better wages, which I am unclear on how that arises, more vacancies creates demand perhaps, but its no guarantee and certainly when you still struggle to fill them, will you accept that some people on benefits simply cannot work, or are you going to find an even bigger stick for them? You can club them with the entire bloody tree, if they can’t work, they can’t work, it doesn’t mean they are feckless but it does appear that this is the thinking within Reform UK. And pretty much that’s all I can find that is in print and concretely written down, but it might as well have been written by Oakeshott herself in my opinion.
If you hate the Tories for what they are doing and saying about benefit reform right now, Reform UK are certainly no better than that on the face of it and I’d certainly take anything Oakeshott writes on one hand with the contempt it will almost certainly deserve, but also a window into how that party would run things should it ever become more prominent.
And if you think I would leave Labour out of all of this, well here’s a video recommendation for you on that where Starmer formally ditched plans to enshrine the rights of disabled people into law, his party clearly no better either, if you want a good place to start, I’d opt to go and have a look at the Green Party policy pages on that – not only can you find all party policies in detail, but Universal Basic Income as is their plan will restore dignity and end poverty completely and we wouldn’t even have these debates anymore and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.