By Laura McBride
Appeasing Tory Euro-sceptics with a referendum has failed and the UK has voted to leave the EU. The collapse of the government has brought in a new era of British politics, but what does this new Britain have in store for the ordinary people fighting to survive.
June 23rd, 2016 is an unforgettable date to most of the United Kingdom. Those who voted ‘leave’ rejoiced in the 2% of votes which tipped them over the edge to success, while ‘remainers’ mourned their small minority. Both parties turned their eyes to the future, looking with hope to David Cameron’s government to pull off the biggest diplomatic feat in years. His government promptly collapsed, and the lizard in human skin, Theresa May, took over after a shambolic contest for leadership of the Conservative Party, and as consequence, the growingly isolated nation. Besides her misguided and disastrous election result in 2017, her accomplishments have not exactly piled up during her eighteen months in office. However, saying this would be false, for she has done something.
That something is Universal Credit - an overhaul of six key benefits to include them all in one handy payment. It aims to abolish individual benefits, like child tax credit, jobseeker’s allowance and employment support allowance, in the hope of weaning claimants of the welfare system and create a more equal society.
Evidently, this has not happened. To understand precisely why the system needed reform, a 2016 film protested the bedlam of claiming benefits and exposed the failures of the government, both locally and nationally.
‘I, Daniel Blake’ follows a 59-year-old man in Newcastle, who has suffered a heart attack at work and has been declared unfit for work by his cardiologist. The Department of Work and Pensions, however, declares him fit for work, so he is unable to claim employment support allowance. Instead, he is encouraged to apply for jobseeker’s allowance, despite being physically unable to work. The realistic bureaucracy is frustrating to watch, and the incompetence of staff at the job centre evokes sympathy on Daniel’s behalf. The bureaucrats provide no assistance, even when he informs them about his computer illiteracy, because it is Daniel’s duty to make life easier for the government and not the other way around. Daniel manages to appeal this decision, and arrives for his meeting with Katie, a poverty-stricken single mother who is forced to take desperate measures to try and feed her family. The anxiety and stress caused by the whole process puts Daniel’s health at risk, and effectively demonstrates the trauma of the benefits system.
But why is this perfect for Brexit Britain? The answer lies in one of the subplots of the film. Katie is on benefits because she cannot find work, which is likely to become a prospect for much of the UK workforce post-Brexit. With key industries looking to pull out of the country should single market membership cease, unemployment may rise, and with it the number of dole claimants. Yet, how can we support a system that aims to cheat people out of welfare assistance, often hard-earned as a previous taxpayer who has come upon hard times.
The looming uncertainty that the referendum brought is symbolic of the daily struggles of those on benefits, and even moreso for those on universal credit. Delays of up to a month and a half to receive any payment and the refusal of the government to pay rent in the meantime have left claimants destitute. People have been turned out onto the street, and left to use the already overstretched food banks, which are failing to cope with Britain’s poor, much like Katie. The harrowing scenes at the food bank in the film are a reflection of the reality faced by the volunteers at such establishments on a daily basis - but they are horrifically underfunded and critically over capacity.
How can it be possible for such a film, prolific in its Cannes Film Festival release and following accolades, to not make a difference to the anti-poverty measures of the ruling party? Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Theresa May to watch it during a particularly heated Prime Minister’s Questions, but there has been little change. It is simply because Conservative members of the House of Commons and House of Lords do not believe in the existence of poverty, and write it off as a symptom of Victorian inequality, remedied by the actions of the Liberal government of the early 20th century. Baron Freud, Minister of State for Welfare Reform under David Cameron’s two governments, is quoted as saying “Food from a food bank - the supply is a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good.” In other words, food banks exist to feed the consumerist appetites of the nation, instead of providing a means of survival for the destitute.
Food banks are not a way for ‘scroungers’ to live off the goodwill of others. They are a tool to help people survive through the generosity of their community when the State has failed to provide. In a modern, developed country, people should not have to starve among an abundance of food, tonnes of which is wasted every year by corporations and supermarket chains. But as prices rise following Brexit, it looks like this is the future that Britain will be facing - an undernourished, unemployed workforce simply trying to exist, while the government is actively working against them to save a few hundred pounds - much like Daniel and Katie in ‘I, Daniel Blake’.
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