Rishi Sunak’s big speech on reforming disability benefits was intended to show that the government had a grip on the economic and health challenges of the UK’s rising levels of long-term sickness. Instead, it came over as an administration running out of ideas, high on strident rhetoric, and desperate to cut welfare bills at all costs.
It was a “moral mission”, Sunak declared, to overhaul the current welfare system, which was “unfit for purpose”. Disability benefits were too easy to cheat, too cushy, too easily claimed. The speech was a clear appeal to the notion, in vogue on the right, that “mental health culture” has “gone too far”.
