Right-wing warhawks have been doubling down on calls to slash Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare to fund imperialistic warmongering against Iran.

Naturally, it’s the usual suspects spearheading the charge, namely opaquely-funded think tanks, the billionaire press, and of course, their co-conspirators in parliament.

And once again, these rich colonial capitalist assholes all want to make poor and disabled people cannon fodder for their illegal invasions.

Slash DWP welfare to fund illegal war: here we go again

First to the welfare cut chest beating was the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) on 3 March. As the US and Israel heinously massacred close to 800 people in Iran, unprovoked, including 168 children at a girl’s school, the CSJ slipped out a comment on chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget with a not-so subtle militaristic subtext. Predictably, policy director Joe Shalam lambasted the “spend on health benefits” compared to the “defence budget”, calling it a:

monumental waste of human potential.

Translation: disaster capitalists are ogling the opportunity to exploit disabled people for war profits.

Next came former Tory MP Dehenna Davison on Jeremy Vine spouting the same worn rhetoric. And incidentally, she drew on CSJ research:

Nobody gets PIP for “low level anxiety and depression”. The criteria does not allow it and 62% of PIP claims are rejected as there has to be evidence of severity. So Im afraid zero bombs could be made by stopping this as it isnt happening. CSJ talking shite as usual. https://t.co/Z1FC4txS9E

— Spin Decoder (@leith1076) March 6, 2026

Meanwhile, leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch was at Conservative spring conference maxing out the jingoism. She was banging on about bringing back the two-child limit to benefits. According to the Independent, a Tory policy wonk somewhere has totted up the numbers. The party calculated that un-abolishing the cap would spare the government £3.2bn worth of annual spend.

Instead of lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, the Tories want to use half that to recruit 20,000 new troops. And doubtless the majority of them will be from working class households the cap has trapped in poverty to boot.

Reporting on this, vile shitrag the Daily Mail prefaced its headline “Bullets over benefits”. Because that’s the kind of clickbait late-stage capitalist hellscape we now live in. It’s one where major political party leaders would literally rather the government spend taxpayer cash to buy bullets to murder kids in cold blood abroad, than fund social security to stop kids from starving in one of the richest nations in the world.

The Centre for Social Justice pushing warfare over welfare

Then, over the weekend, the right-wing press – including the Express and the Telegraph – went into further overdrive.

The culprit was once again Iain Duncan Smith’s brainchild, the CSJ.

Specifically, it published research utilising Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimations that welfare spending will increase by £18bn this year. By the CSJ’s maths, it said this could finance:

15 advanced Royal Navy frigates, 220 fighter jets, or 250,000 soldiers’ salaries, more than three times the size of the regular British Army.

However, even the war-frenzied Labour government came out critical, calling it a “deeply disingenuous report”. Notably, it pointed out that “well over half” of this will be spent on pensions. Of course, it was quick to then highlight its defence budget increases. And consequently, it undid any good work it did debunking the CSJ analysis.

And as is the ego-massaging nature of think tanks, both the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance reared their ugly warmongering, welfare-snatching heads here too, backing the CSJ.

The kids aren’t alright – so let’s stop state support and send them to war?!

The CSJ also snuck into its press release on the research that it had:

called on ministers to follow through with proposals to scrap certain benefits for under 22s to instead fund a scheme helping employers take on British young people not in work, education or training.

So of course that scheme it’s referring to is the government’s flagship ‘Youth Guarantee’. That’s the one hellbent on shunting young people into low-paying or below minimum wage labour. And naturally, as the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has pointed out, it’s about kicking them off Universal Credit as well.

Unsurprisingly, the vicious CSJ wants the government to fund the Youth Guarantee by literally banning “certain benefits” for under 22s. In March 2025, (now former) DWP boss Liz Kendall actually announced its disgraceful plan to do just that with the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) part of Universal Credit (UC).

At the time, the Canary’s HG noted how a callous Kendall told ministers her depraved plan for tackling youth unemployment involved pushing more young people to join the armed forces.

Now it appears, in just under a year, we’ve already come full circle. At the end of February the DWP held its first Youth Guarantee jobs fair. Behemoths of the military industrial complex stacked it to the rafters. As Charlton-Dailey reported:

the Royal Air Force and the UK Armed Forces were there to seduce working-class kids with the promise of a stable income, a roof over their heads and “duty”.

What’s more, arms manufacturers propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and now undoubtedly the attacks on Iran, were out recruiting in force.

National security over social security: the same old story

One happened to be F-35 fighter jet parts supplier Teledyne. The electronics manufacturer had a seat at the table in a cosy 16-company discussion with DWP boss Pat McFadden. And just who has been vociferously sounding the battle cry to cut welfare to increase military spending? That would be, former paid Teledyne advisor and retired “general for hire” – ex-army chief and currently suspended peer, one Lord Richard Dannatt.

Ultimately, when the right-wing establishment calls for cuts to welfare for warfare, it means serving up working class and disabled people to its necro-capitalist war-machine.

The narrative of slashing social security to beef up supposed ‘national security’ is certainly nothing new. It’s an abhorrent time-honoured tradition that UK governments collaborate in militaristic colonial resource-grabbing with the US and other imperialistic warmongers. And there’s a pattern of governments using it to redirect the public’s attention away from their own corruption and failures. The ‘enemy’ abroad distracts from and justifies austerity at home.

In the coming days and weeks, we can likely expect many more calls like this from greedy imperialistic grifters – let’s be honest, mostly wealthy white men – whose kids the DWP won’t be forcing to the frontlines or production houses of another illegal war.

Featured image via the Canary

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

4 min read28 min

A few years ago, a reviewer of a book I’d edited complained that it was not so much full of conversation starters but conversation stoppers. When this was reported back to the academic contributors, it was not taken as criticism. “We are,” one of the authors said, with a little too much enthusiasm, “the sort of people who like to say: ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that’.”

This exchange came to mind as the petition calling for automatic by-elections whenever an MP changes party sailed past 100,000 signatures; it is now scheduled for debate later this month. On the face of it, it seems fair enough – if an MP is elected under one party but then changes affiliation, why shouldn’t voters get a say? – but it is, yes, a bit more complicated than that, involving some fundamental questions about the role of an MP, and ones that could easily have unintended consequences if we are not careful.

There have been two Private Members’ Bills on this issue in recent decades, in 2011 and 2020. Both attempted to introduce a recall petition if an MP voluntarily changed affiliation. The voluntary bit is important, else we could be giving the party whips the sort of disciplinary tool of which they can currently only dream.

“If you don’t vote with us on the Murder of the First Born (No 2) Bill, then we will remove the whip, and you will have to fight a by-election.”

“Ah, well, yes, I wasn’t in favour initially, but I do now see the wisdom of the government’s position.”

Yet I am not sure this voluntary/involuntary distinction works. It is always worth asking: how might someone – someone who was perhaps a bit sneaky – use this to their advantage? In this case, what is to stop an MP staying within their party but behaving differently? You don’t need to defect from the Conservatives; you just start wearing turquoise, telling people to vote Reform, voting the Reform line and so on.

New Zealand offers an interesting lesson. It passed laws against party-hopping in both 2001 and 2018. They have a great term for it: ‘waka-jumping’, after the Māori word for canoe. The creators of the 2001 law were rightly suspicious that not all MPs would voluntarily announce they were defecting – so they created a system by which the party leadership could also report an MP as having de facto left their party, subject to some procedural hoop-jumping and the support of two-thirds of the parliamentary group.

As Andrew Geddis notes in his account of the legislation, this effectively changes the ownership of the seat from the MP to the party. Even if it is not the intention, it is easy enough to see how such rules lead to a tightening of party discipline. Indeed, one of the many curiosities of this issue is that there are many people who feel negatively about defections but positively about rebellious MPs. Yet many of the arguments used against allowing MPs to defect can easily be deployed against MPs being allowed to vote against their party whip. In India, MPs are barred from both.

Debates on this are not helped by the hypocrisy frequently involved. If you have a spare five minutes, look at the supporters of those two previous Private Members’ Bills. You might note that several were later to switch parties; you might also note that not one of them then resigned their seat. Rules for thee, not for me.

A final note: don’t call it crossing the floor, unless they actually cross the floor. Most changes of party label take place on the same side of the House; they are much less consequential. 

Further reading: A Geddis, Proportional Representation, ‘Party Hopping’ and the Limits of Electoral Regulation: A Cautionary Tale from New Zealand, Common Law World Review (2006) and his Standards of MP Behaviour and Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Party Hopping’ Law, Public Law Review (2025)

From enabling the fast transit of food and medicines across the Channel to ensuring that manufacturers receive critical “just in time” car parts, the Port of Dover impacts all our lives on a daily basis.  

“It’s the most efficient and reliable route for conducting that trade,” says Doug Bannister, who has been CEO of the Port of Dover since 2019. “It’s a joy and a privilege but it’s also an incredible responsibility for all of us who work here to make certain that this iconic, world-class gateway operates seamlessly for the benefit of everyone. 

“Because of its scale and the implications of that scale to the economy, society and the prosperity of the nation, it is probably the single most economically consequential piece of UK national infrastructure.”  

Founded by Royal Charter in 1606, the Port of Dover is the UK’s busiest international ferry port, providing a fast, efficient and sustainable connection to mainland Europe. More than 2 million freight vehicles pass through its gates annually – substantially more than any other port in the country. 

The Port operates for 364 days of the year, welcoming around 10 million passengers and handling more than £144bn of trade annually. A third of all trade in goods between the UK and the European Union comes through Dover.  

As the government seeks to reset and deepen its trading partnership with the EU, the Port of Dover has an essential role to play in helping to deliver long-term economic growth and trade resilience for the UK. The Port is a growth-enabling asset, capable of unlocking trade, jobs, tourism, investment and innovation.  

“We reach every corner of the UK so we’re able to open up access to markets that other routes and other supply chains cannot do,” says Bannister. 

The future growth of the Port undoubtedly depends on targeted investment in upgrading and improving onsite and offsite infrastructure. 

The Port is hugely supportive, for instance, of the Lower Thames Crossing, a new 14-mile A road that will link the A2 in Kent and the M25 in Essex through the longest road tunnel in the UK.  

“It is going to provide a step change in how people travel around the nation – and crucially it’s going to provide a much more robust link between the Port of Dover and destinations north of London,” explains Bannister.  

He would like the government to commit to the dualling of the last seven miles of the A2 into the Port to ensure the strategic resilience of the route for international travel – a move that could unleash disproportionate benefits for national trade. Another ask is to assist the private sector in investing in “suitable, secure, safe overnight lorry parking” in Kent to serve freight traffic passing through the Port, thereby providing even greater reliability and robustness to the supply chains using the route. 

“Taking a system-wide view of these key infrastructure interventions could unlock exponential potential,” he says. “It would be a step change in how trade and travel between the UK and the continent works.” 

The need for both frictionless and secure borders is paramount – not only for border compliance but to enhance operational efficiency, customer experience and long-term national competitiveness. The Port has already introduced an innovative digital solution for the EU Entry Exit System (EES), an EU-wide digital border management system for non-EU passengers. A new processing facility has been built at the Port’s Western Docks, currently being used just for coaches and foot passengers, but the Port’s £40m investment is also to be used for tourist cars later this year. 

“The efforts that our government is making in improving the relationship with the EU, looking at reducing the administrative burden around things like the SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary] checks and making travel and trade more conducive for the British economy and society are great aims – aims we’ve got an interest in and want to support,” says Bannister. 

“From a trade perspective, getting closer to Europe, making these positive moves towards closer working relationships and easing the flow of trade will unlock tremendous potential for the economy here.”   

The electrification agenda is another priority. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the EU and the UK have all put forward maritime carbon emission tax plans that will significantly affect shipping lines and ultimately consumers through higher prices on the shelves. The EU has already introduced its scheme and the UK will implement theirs from 2028 but the IMO’s global version has been delayed.  

However, because of the higher intensity of the Dover routes (130 ferry crossings a day) and Dover’s role in serving the whole of the UK, Bannister says that electrifying the route would have a disproportionately positive impact and keep prices down. He believes that establishing a “green shipping corridor” at Dover is not only in the interest of the UK economy and key supply chains but is also urgent and necessary. 

The Port has set clearly staged targets to reach net zero and has reduced its carbon footprint by more than 98 per cent since 2007. One ferry operator already operates hybrid ferries on the 22-mile route across the Channel and the Port is in discussions with another operator on the short straits route between Dover and Calais about transitioning to a fully electric service.  

“The key to us is getting an appropriate supply of commercially viable electricity to the ships,” says Bannister. “At the moment we’ve got a supply of eight megawatts of electricity into the Port but to electrify short straits shipping we’d need around 170 megawatts. It’s not clear to us when the grid will be able to supply that degree of electricity to us at a price that would be economical to use.” 

Despite the challenges it is clear that getting the right supportive policy framework in place for the Port is crucial. 

“I have a greater sense that the government is looking more favourably towards Dover being the jewel in the crown around supply chain, trade and travel resilience,” says Bannister.  

“The future for the business conducted through the Port is bright. The moves that our government is making to create a closer relationship with the EU unlock vast possibilities and the investments into key infrastructure will have a profound effect on supply chains and travel.  

“Driving carbon out of travel is hugely exciting for efficiency and productivity – and, of course, the impact on climate. And then finally, we’re walking into a whole new chapter with the use of digital and technology and artificial intelligence. The Port of Dover is just starting to leverage what these profound new tools will be able to offer to us and, by implication the nation as a whole, and that is exciting.”