right-wing war hawks bleat about ‘bullets over benefits’

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:

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