Shady think tanks start the year as they mean to go on — demonising benefit claimants

Murky think tanks lurking at Tufton Street and Westminster have begun the New Year with a shameful bang. That is to say, the usual way: by scapegoating benefit claimants.

Here are all the (largely) opaquely-funded organisations helping the corporate media manufacture consent for cruel welfare cuts. This is what they’ve been up to so far in their bid to ram forward further callous benefit ‘reforms’ and pit the public against people seeking state support.

Mealy-mouth-pieces in the media vilifying benefits

Shady benefit-slashing machinations abound across the mainstream media. Throughout January, the hate-mongers traded in a reprehensible assortment of stories maligning claimants. By our count, think tanks spawned these pieces in at least 56 instances:

The award for the most despicable attempts to vilify go to…The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) for puerile attempts to pit the public against migrants.

Notably, it tag-teamed with shadow Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) sec Helen Whately in an article for shitrag the Daily Mail. It made up more lies about the numbers claiming welfare to scapegoat refugees and asylum seekers.

So, the usual racist, xenophobic bullshit? We’re not linking to it here.

Other dishonourable mentions included:

• A Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report triggered no fewer than 21 stories. The analysis attempted to drive a wedge between pensioners and welfare recipients on one end, and workers on the other. Multiple outlets framed it that Labour’s taxes are “hammering” working people, while pensioners and welfare claimants would be “better off”. This would be thanks to inflation-linked increases due to the triple-lock and the increase in Universal Credit’s standard allowance. Of course, every piece failed to mention that new disabled UC claimants will be thousands of pounds worse off after Labour cut the health element almost in half.
• The corporate media churned out no less than 13 articles for the Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) Rewiring Education report. Headlines blurted every variation under the sun on ‘700,000 graduates claiming benefits’. Put simply, the report essentially set about discouraging poor kids from going to go to uni — go figure.

And it wasn’t just the print press. Think tank spokespeople and research appeared in a number of TV and radio shows throughout January as well:

CSJ gears up for a vile propaganda drive against benefits claimants

An announcement from Iain Duncan-Smith’s diabolical brainchild drew multiple puff pieces for its latest project to smear claimants. These made the decidedly dubious (more like: utter bullshit) claim that six million Britons would be better off on benefits.

Notably, at the end of January, the think tank decided now’s a good time to amp up the antagonism on disabled welfare claimants. You know, right after a round of vicious benefit cuts that’s set to make some disabled people destitute. Not enough, says blatant misnomer the CSJ.

Now, the think tank has launched its so-called Welfare 2030 enquiry to:

diagnose the causes of escalating worklessness, its harms to struggling families and the cost to the taxpayer.

It says this will involve a “Big Listen” series with its 900+ strong “CSJ Alliance of small charities” throughout spring. Then it plans to take these ideas to the major party conferences. At them, it says it will host ‘debate’ about the so-called “welfare crisis”.

For the project, the CSJ has of course put together a dedicated webpage. There, an animated reel of right-wing foghorns screech out frontpage headlines bleating that “5 million paid not to work” and “Get a grip on welfare… or tax bomb will go off this Autumn”. Foregone conclusion much?

Introducing the enquiry, the ever-ghoulish former grim reaper of the DWP, IDS, was bandying about the establishment’s favourite trope. In particular, he was wanging on that:

The system must stop writing off thousands of people every day, and incentives to work must be restored to end this ruinous waste of human potential.

Hall of infamy (lobbyists not even being shy about it)

Think tanks rarely miss the opportunity to boast their role seeding regressive policy. Case in point:

The Canary’s formidable chief DWP botherer Rachel Charlton-Dailey recently did a scathing and on-point take-down of the government’s wilfully misleading PR about the farcical scheme. Contrary to its name, there’s actually no real evidence it’s actually ‘working well’.

Funnily enough, that’s precisely the title of its predecessor scheme, which the DWP based it on, and the Canary previously showed to be a sham. Needless to say, the CSJ has long been plugging the glorified work programme to coerce chronically ill and disabled people into work.

Weaseling into Westminster

Of course then, this nebulous back-scratching ecosystem would not be complete without Westminster. MPs and peers will regularly lean on think tank talking points that the mainstream media has propagated.

In this way, think tanks and the press are collaborators in manufacturing consent for benefit cuts and other punitive welfare policies. For instance, in January, Conservative MP Harriet Baldwin paraded the CSJ’s latest rotten report on graduates claiming benefits (mentioned above).

However, it’s not only think tank talking points getting around the Palace’s hallowed halls. It’s also the former think tank brains themselves.

As the Canary’s brilliant HG reported, the DWP has set the fox among the henhouse with the appointment of Policy Exchange senior fellow Jean Andre-Prager to the Timms Review steering group.

Serving the interests of billionaires

Ultimately, the point is: from Westminster to the media, think tank ideologues are moving in all the right circles to spread vicious benefit claimant propaganda. The deluge of demonising stories across the pages of the mainstream rumour mill is no accident.

These elitist and covertly-funded capitalist front organisations are driving the attacks on the working class and disabled people from the shadows. All the while, the Labour Party has continued to flirt with ever-more alarming policy ideas these very shady groups have been cooking up.

It’s more than time to shine a searing spotlight on the hidden forces colluding with the billionaire press to dismantle the welfare state.

Featured image via the author