Blew up a dairy farm

In early March US officials released a video of a bombed location in Ecuador. They bragged that it showed how their strikes at sea had now shifted into strikes against cartels on land.

This is utterly extraordinary.

If Hegseth et al got this wrong, think what else is happening with the drug boat strikes and much more.

The U.S. Said It Helped Bomb a Drug Camp. It Was a Dairy Farm.

Gets worse as you read it.

1/ pic.twitter.com/BPJQXkVJNl

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) March 25, 2026

The New York Times (NYT) has since reported that the strike hit a dairy farm:

The military strike appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound, according to interviews with the farm’s owner, four of its workers, human rights lawyers and residents and leaders in San Martín, the remote farming village in northern Ecuador where the strike took place.

The US and the Ecuadorian military are working together on ‘counter-cartel’ operations. As the Canary reported on 9 March, the country’s president is a Trump-style politician:

Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa has pushed through ‘urgent’ neoliberal reforms, cutting public spending while clamping down on civil liberties, workers’ rights, and indigenous environmental activism against mining and fossil fuel extraction.

Workers arriving at the farm on 3 March told the NYT:

Ecuadorean soldiers arrived by helicopter on March 3, doused several shelters and sheds with gasoline and ignited them after interrogating workers and beating four of them with the butts of their guns.

Workers tortured at the farm

The workers also said they were tortured:

Three of the workers, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the government, said the soldiers later choked and subjected them to electrical shocks before letting them go.

Three days later, on 6 March, the Ecuadorian – not US – military allegedly bombed the site from a helicopter:

Ecuadorean helicopters returned to the farm three days later, on March 6, and appeared to drop explosives on the farm’s smoldering remains.

At this point, Ecuadorian forces recorded the footage that was later shown by American officials. Other buildings, including nearby abandoned houses, were reportedly burned too.

Trump has become bogged down in a war with Iran. Yet this is a major diversion from the 2025 National Security Strategy, which had a major focus on hemispheric control. But while the news cycle focuses on the more explosive war with Iran – with its deep implications for the global energy economy – the US dirty war is still exacting a heavy toll in Latin America.

Featured image via the Canary

Deutsche Bank has warned in a new report that the rise of the petroyuan poses a clear challenge to the U.S. currency. The petrodollar system, built on a 1974 agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, faces a “perfect storm” from the ongoing war on Iran initiated by the US/UK/Israel, the bank said.

The bank said that the foundations of the “security-for-oil-pricing arrangement” between the US and the GCC states have been shaken.

The current conflict has arguably shaken some core foundations of the petrodollar regime: the security-for-oil-pricing arrangement. US military assets and bases in the Gulf have come under attack in the war.

Oil infrastructure in the Gulf has also been hit. And the US ability to provide the maritime security to ensure the global flow of oil has been challenged with the closure of Hormuz. The US security umbrella has been fundamentally tested.

The legacy of this conflict for the dollar could be the ways in which it tests the foundations of the petrodollar regime.

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The dollar has not strengthened much in this crisis because of rising US fiscal risk from military spending and the sell-off of US Treasuries by Asia and the Middle East to defend their currencies, the report said.

“The conflict could be the catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance and the beginnings of the petroyuan,” the bank said, pointing out reports that Iran is allowing the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz if oil payments are made in yuan. China, a long-time partner of Iran, is also the nation’s biggest oil customer.

Just as the 1973 oil embargo led to diversification away from Gulf oil and reserve-building in places like Canada and the North Sea, a similar effect may happen this time. Europe, Asia, and many parts of the Global South will be the ones this time, looking at ways to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Reduced global oil trade would also create more room for the pricing of goods and services to shift away from the dollar, the report said.

Featured image via OMFIF

MPs are considering yet another inquiry into the carers’ allowance scandal Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). This time, it’s over the fact that the department is continuing to chase unpaid carers for discredited repayment bills.

Only, there’s a glaring issue here, isn’t there? There’s not a number of inquiries we can run, or an amount of faux outrage that MPs can show that will fix this problem.

Fundamentally, the entire political machinery of the last few decades has ensured that the DWP is dedicated to treating poor and disabled people as if they’re thieves.

MPs have ensured that the department will hound recipients at every opportunity – whether or not it’s even remotely valid. And now they’re feigning shock when the DWP is… hounding carers as if they’re thieves?

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

DWP: ‘difficult to find any justifiable reasons’

Back in November 2025, disability rights expert Liz Sayce published her damning review of carer’s allowance overpayments at the DWP. As a consequence, the government admitted that the rules it uses to average carers’ earnings failed to follow social security law. As a result, hundreds of carers had been convicted of benefit fraud.

However, Commons work and pensions select committee chair Debbie Abrahams has recently called out a “torrent of missteps” in the DWP’s actions since the review. In particular, the department has massively delayed its plans to repay the tens of thousands of carers it previously slapped with bogus overpayment bills.

Worse still, the Guardian published an investigation last week revealing that the DWP is still sending out repayment bills to carers. It knows those repayments were calculated using unlawful guidance – it simply doesn’t give a shit.

Carers Trust policy manager Ramzi Suleiman condemned the DWP’s continued use of the old guidance:

It’s difficult to find any justifiable reasons why the new guidance was not used to assess these alleged overpayments.

Likewise, Carers UK chief executive Helen Walker said that:

Carers need to see clear, proactive communication about the timeline for the reassessment process. We have heard from carers who say that they are living with significant uncertainty.

‘Not serious in its public commitment’

As such, Abrahams has fired off a letter to social security minister and all-round wet wipe Stephen Timms. She called out the DWP’s management culture, and said the failure to offer carers redress “with due care” would lead the public to:

conclude that [it] is not serious in its public commitment to do so, which is extremely damaging to the existing issues of trust with the department.

Spoiler alert: we have already concluded that the DWP is not serious about righting its injustices. Because, you know, its injustices could fill around 2,244 articles on a mid-sized indie news site.

As such, its quite unsurprising that MPs are ‘actively considering’ a fresh inquiry into the DWP’s treatment of unpaid carers. Of course, we can already tell them what they’ll find, but they won’t bloody like it.

And, speak of the devil – in reaction to the news, a DWP spokesperson said:

We’ve accepted the vast majority of the Sayce review’s recommendations and have already made changes – hiring extra staff, updating internal guidance, and making letters clearer.

Note the language they’re using here. The “making letters clearer” implies that carers are failing to understand. They’re not – they’re being slapped with illegal repayment bills.

Similarly, the ‘updating internal guidance’ clearly isn’t happening. It’s been four months since they were told their guidance was unlawful, and they’re still using it.

Repeatedly, successive governments have tasked the DWP with reducing benefits payments and rooting out largely imaginary ‘fraud’. They don’t get to feign shock that the DWP is hounding innocent people. That’s the department’s whole job – the same disgraceful job the government tasked them with.

Featured image via the Canary

Former Tory prisons minister Crispin Blunt has pleaded guilty to possessing recreational quantities of crystal meth, cannabis and the sedative GBL. The plea was entered at Westminster magistrates’ court this morning, 25 March 2026. The drugs were found during a police investigation into rape allegations in 2023, but that investigation was dropped for lack of evidence.

During a raid on his Surrey home in October 2023, Blunt pointed out the drugs to police. Meth was valued at £200-250 was on a cabinet next to his bed, a separate mix of b while £200 worth of GBL was in a laptop bag. A small amount of cannabis valued at £10 or less was also listed.

The irony of a prisons minister convicted of drugs is obvious. However, Blunt is one of the more ‘mixed bag’ Tories. Under Boris Johnson in October 2020, Blunt voted to keep poor UK children hungry by rejecting footballer Marcus Rashford’s call to extend free school meals through school holidays. But in 2019 he rebelled to help Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour humiliate Theresa May. He has also condemned Israeli interference in UK politics and serves as a director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians.

In 2016, Blunt admitted in a Commons speech to using amyl nitrate ‘poppers’ and opposed the government’s plan to ban them.

Featured image via the Canary

In the upcoming Senedd election on 7 May, the Wales Green Party will stand candidates across all 16 constituencies. And the surging party is on course to get its best ever result in the nation, thanks to the new proportional system of voting.

Green Party: rent freezes, public ownership of water, and international law

Ahead of a likely wipeout for both Labour and the Tories, the Greens will probably stand alongside centre-left nationalists Plaid Cymru to oppose far-right Reform UK and the other right-wing parties. Welsh Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter has been clear about his party’s goals.

Slaughter, who has been leader of the Wales Green Party since 2018, has suggested that he’s ready to cooperate with Plaid Cymru. But he will be calling for speedy action on issues like “genuine public ownership” of Welsh Water and a demand for “rent freezes”. As he said in a statement, Green candidates:

will take the cost of living seriously by introducing rent controls, start cleaning up our rivers by holding Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water to account, and stand up for international law and human rights in the face of government complicity in genocide and illegal wars.

And as the party noted:

Wales is the first nation in the UK to scrap the First-Past-The-Post system and the election in May will be the first under the full proportionate representation voting system that was introduced when the Senedd Reform Bill was approved on 9 May 2024.

Standing outside the historic Labour-Tory duopoly, the Greens will be one of the big beneficiaries of the change in the voting system:

YouGov’s first MRP of the 2026 Senedd election shows Plaid Cymru on course to be the largest party

PC: 43 (+19 from 2021*)
Ref: 30 (+30)
Lab: 12 (-32)
Grn: 10 (+10)
Con: 1 (-25)
LD: 0 (-2)

*notional results had the last election been conducted on the new system based on data… pic.twitter.com/nTpERackDc

— YouGov (@YouGov) March 25, 2026

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This is the projections from the latest poll for Wales.

The polling was by YouGov for ITV Cymru and Cardiff Uni.

You can find the full analysis in my pinned tweet. pic.twitter.com/aRBoA4PJEG

— Will Hayward (@WillHayCardiff) March 24, 2026

The chance to challenge establishment parties via electoral reform is one reason why Green Party of England and Wales leader Zack Polanski has also promised to prioritise this change across the UK:

Zack Polanski sets out his day 1 priorities if PM:

1. Change voting system from FPTP to PR
2. Introduce a wealth tax
3. End homelessness (including by ending right to buy, building social housing and freezing rent) pic.twitter.com/AokyvYDBRa

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) March 24, 2026

Progressives must stop Reform

As the Wales Green Party has stressed, hate-mongering Reform leader Nigel Farage:

has no respect for Wales at all

Farage has no respect for Wales at all.

His last leader turned out to be a Russian spy – now he makes glib remarks about us like one more group of people to aim his hatred at.https://t.co/dBQXEZg8A5

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— Plaid Werdd Cymru | Wales Green Party (@WalesGreenParty) March 19, 2026

Polanski, meanwhile, has reminded Welsh voters that:

Nigel Farage had a leader in Wales who was a Russian asset go to prison for 10.5 years.

As the BBC reported, former Reform leader in Wales Nathan Gill received a sentence of:

10-and-a-half years in prison after admitting taking bribes for pro-Russia interviews and speeches.

He apparently got “up to £40,000” for this when he was a politician in the European Parliament.

Despite this record, however, Reform may do well in May’s election. So progressives across the board will need to get out and vote to show Reform that its corrupt divisiveness is not welcome in Wales.

Featured image via the Canary

Gorton and Denton had been a Labour fortress for a hundred years. In one form or another, the party held it for a century – until 2026, when the Green Party stormed in with a 27% swing. The victory marked their first ever Westminster by-election win and their first MP in the North of England in the form of Hannah Spencer. And, analysis shows that Labour lost the white working class vote to the Greens.

Now, a postmortem of the election analysis has Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, experiencing an epiphany: voters need a reason to vote Labour.

Labour sniffing out clues

The Guardian reported that, according to the party’s own internal analysis, Labour lost significant numbers of white working-class voters to the Greens. Not Reform.

Powell told activists in a call that:

There’s no doubt that we suffered from a large protest, with voters telling us to do better, be stronger about our purpose and values, and deliver the change we promised faster and more clearly,” she said. “We have ceded the political megaphone and it’s up to us to strongly and proudly get that back.

And, she said voters need a “reason” to vote Labour again.

Powell’s diagnosis? People either voted tactically to stop Reform, or they voted in protest to give Labour a kicking. Her fix? Talk more about free childcare, workers’ rights, and renters’ protections.

Activists might wonder how one can boast about Labour’s record on any of those, but Powell won’t do much reflecting. She will probably not point out that this might also be an outcome of her boss, Starmer’s, wide-reaching purge of progressives in Labour.

Burying their head in the sand

In fact, the Guardian reported she chided the:

hot-takes on what happened in the byelection, from many who weren’t even there.

Translation: don’t listen to the critics.

The Guardian report further noted that senior party figures have said in recent weeks Labour needs a thorough overhaul of its strategy, especially in long-held safe seats where the data is rarely updated. The reasoning? The current volatility of UK politics and the high numbers of voters switching parties, and previously non-voters turning out, especially for Reform UK.

Notice the framing: Reform. Always Reform.

Even after losing white working-class voters to the Greens, Labour’s strategists can’t stop staring at the right. The party that actually took the seat—the Greens—barely gets a mention. There’s a hot take for you, Lucy.

Featured image via the Canary

DWP — The Resolution Foundation is the latest to jump on the disabled young people-bashing bandwagon. On Tuesday 24 March, the think tank posted a video on its X account laying into so-called NEETs (young people not in education, employment, or training).

Naturally, the fact that disabled young people are not in jobs had nothing to do with exploitative employers or the dire lack of accessible jobs. Or you know, there’s evidently no significance to the simple fact that ‘inactive’ claimants on the health element of Universal Credit have gone through a rigorous assessment and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has quite literally found them too sick to work.

Nope, the oh-so generous benefits system is to blame for ‘incentivising’ them not to enter employment. That’s according to the actually generously paid non-disabled talking heads at the Resolution Foundation. Now where have we heard that before?

The ostensible Labour government mouthpiece was spouting this bile all as the DWP is just under two weeks away from slashing Universal Credit’s health element in fucking half for new claimants.

Of course, disabled people haven’t soon forgotten that it was the Resolution Foundation that was behind the callous idea in the first place.

Resolution Foundation: Universal Credit ‘incentivising’ young people not to work

The video in question was a conversation between its research director Lindsay Judge and its principal economist Nye Cominetti:

There are nearly a million young people neither learning nor earning in the UK.

To what extent is that being driven by the structure of our benefit system? Lindsay Judge explains ⤵️ https://t.co/WkcwQ7ZNfc pic.twitter.com/MAgBNNjp67

— Resolution Foundation (@resfoundation) March 24, 2026

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Laying it on thick with the lazy scrounger insinuation from the get-go, Cominetti asked Judge:

To what extent do we think, you know, the incentives, structures and so on in the benefits system are to blame for our NEET rates?

Judge started by at least acknowledging the pitiful rates of Universal Credit. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but lean into the myth that benefits ‘incentivise’ people to stay out of work:

I think it’s really clear that for young people who’re unemployed who get a lower standard allowance Universal Credit rate, the incentives to be on Universal Credit are pretty dismal. So anybody who thinks that they’re languishing on kind of lavish benefits doesn’t know anything about the standard allowance.

Judge almost gets it, almost. She seemed to attempt to dispel the nonsense idea people are “languishing” on benefits. However, she then basically went on to imply disabled people claiming the health element are doing just that:

I think it’s a bit different for young people who are in the inactive category and who are on Universal Credit health element. Because that’s a significant amount more money than the UC standard allowance. And not only do they get more money if they’re in that group, but they also aren’t subject to conditionalities, so they’re not sanctioned…So I think there are financial reasons why the benefits system is pushing young people perhaps to be in that inactive category.

DWP Universal Credit cuts: brainchild of the Resolution Foundation

Judge’s spiel wasn’t all that surprising. The Canary previously uncovered that the Resolution Foundation pushed the idea that the DWP should slash the health element. It proposed that the government could use this to cover increases to the standard allowance.

So of course, now it has to save face with this preposterous narrative. And right now, maligning young benefit claimants is all the right-wing rag, privileged politician rage.

Anyone actually trying to survive on woefully inadequate state support will know it’s horrendous. The billionaire-owned press is constantly demonising disabled claimants. Vilifying rhetoric that recipients are faking their conditions is rife at Westminster.

When the bloody chancellor of the exchequer is going around saying young people on benefits are “stain on this country” and the DWP boss calling the growing number of young disabled people not in work or education a “disease”, how are young disabled claimants meant to feel like anything other than a burden?

But that’s how this Labour government wants it. Because then, it can shunt them into low-paying apprenticeships with its arms manufacturer mates.

Doing the DWP’s dirty work for it

So the Resolution Foundation is doing the government’s dirty work designing and manufacturing consent for cuts for it. Of course, it’s the kind of shameless scapegoating you might expect from the think tank formerly headed by current DWP ghoul Torsten Bell-end.

The very same day it posted its bullshit video, an Independent article was circulating on X. Southampton City Council turned down a young disabled man for a paid bin worker job. He’d been doing the job for nine month – free. Slave-Labour-Soton CC is a ‘disability confident’ employer by the way – for the little that’s clearly worth.

Tell us again how the government’s flashy solution to pay employers to hire young disabled claimants is going to help. So far, it hasn’t provided any evidence its suite of new corporate bungs is going to lead to employers taking on staff they wouldn’t have already.

Rich policy wonks advising on youth unemployment

Judge and Cominetti are likely among the 12/30 Resolution Foundation employees raking in over £60k. And even if they’re not, the remaining 18 employees took home over £1m between them anyway. So it’s all but certain they have a tidy salary.

Thanks to the Resolution Foundation’s bright idea, a single disabled young person under the age of 25 will now get a whopping… £6,670 a year in Universal Credit (£4,063 standard allowance, £2,607 health element). To put that in context, that’s little over a quarter of a full-time annual salary on minimum wage. The DWP has assessed these disabled people as too ill to work.

So, social security like Universal Credit, disability benefits, if they’ve undergone the gruelling application for them, and sometimes housing benefits, will likely be their sole income.

The point being, these paltry benefits aren’t even enough for young disabled people to live on. If they’re ‘languishing’ in anything, it’s state-sanctioned and gratuitously-celebrated destitution. Perhaps these well-paid policy wonks far-removed from the realities of this shamble of a welfare system would like to answer where the fucking incentive is in that?

Featured image via the Canary

An abusive undercover cop who one expert called “misogyny personified” is facing scrutiny at the long-running Undercover Policing ‘Spycops’ Inquiry. And far from expressing genuine regret for the damage and pain he caused, he has shown disdain for the process and even tried to paint himself as the victim.

Spycops inquiry shows rampant misogyny

A decades-long political-policing project in service of the rich and powerful unjustifiably targeted hundreds of left-wing groups. One woman speaking out about it previously told the Canary that “institutional sexism” was at the heart of it. Expert Tom Fowler even described it as:

a rape gang that was covering for each other and celebrating the sexual conquest they had of women in the field.

One member of this gang was Rob Hastings (who used the fake name ‘Rob Harrison’). And as Undercover Research Group co-founder Dónal O’Driscoll told Fowler on 25 March, Hastings was one of the spycops who were “misogyny personified“.

The “unspeakable horrors” Hastings inflicted on a woman going by the pseudonym of ‘Maya’ led Fowler to describe him as:

one of the most… genuinely evil human beings I’ve ever encountered.

The #spycops officer Robert Hastings claims that the relationship was two people being difficult with each other. He essentially claims it was her fault

— Tom Fowler (@tombfowler) March 25, 2026

Hastings squirms as his abuse comes under scrutiny

O’Driscoll called Maya’s testimony in recent days:

some of the most shocking evidence heard to date in the inquiry.

And he explained that what happened to her was:

deeply disturbing, deeply misogynist… It was just pure sexual abuse. Horrible to have heard anybody went through this and she went through it at the hands of a serving police officer who was deceiving her all the way.

But as Fowler noted, there’s a pattern of lying from these “professional con men”. And as O’Driscoll added, there’s been “some outrageous lying” during the inquiry. So it was unsurprising to see Hastings behave this way too.

Fowler observed that Hastings had been “incredibly angry” when giving evidence. O’Driscoll also said:

you could see that he was getting angrier and angrier throughout the day… he felt he was being punished. You got this sense that he was like, ‘why am I being held to account? I’m the victim. My marriage failed.’… No acknowledgement that he is a serial cheater.

The inquiry was spot on in instructing a woman as barrister for Hastings’ evidence. He can’t control his misogyny. Incredible work from Sarah Hemingway. #spycops https://t.co/bXEL2jtsmW

— Donna McLean (@Donna__McLean) March 25, 2026

It seems safe to say that Robert Hastings has done a spectacularly shit job of convincing anyone at all that he isn’t/ wasn’t a controlling, contemptuous, misogynist bastard.#spycops#ACAB pic.twitter.com/jIHcbbVyV8

— COPS (@copscampaign) March 25, 2026

Unapologetic, because ‘left-wing politics is criminality’

Counterfire‘s James Simpson, meanwhile, referred to the public laughter that some of Hastings’s absurd responses got. Simpson told Fowler on 24 March that:

some of the responses from Hastings were quite frankly ridiculous… Absolutely some nonsense that he was coming up with.

Fowler highlighted that Hastings kept trying to bring the focus back onto himself and how “catastrophic” his behaviour had been for him personally:

he has very much painted himself as the victim in all this

And at the same time, Fowler continued:

at no point does [Hastings] accept that what he did might have been an overreach. He’s absolutely convinced that all his reporting is absolutely justified.

This is despite him having collected extensive, unnecessary information about targets’ families, jobs, and countless other details.

Hastings simply treated the unjustifiably intrusive monitoring and indiscriminate data collection, Fowler said, as “fair game”. Part of the justification for the spycop, Fowler added, was that he saw left-wing politics as “some form of criminality”.

In reality, the spycops scandal was something that changed the whole fabric of the country for the worse. And it’s important for us all to hold the state accountable for that. So the more Hastings and his abusive colleagues squirm, the better.

Featured image via the Canary

New analysis has shown the number of long-term unemployed young people has more than doubled over the past three years.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) held its annual Young Workers’ Conference on 21-22 March. And it used the occasion to call on the government to turbocharge its efforts to support young workers.

New TUC analysis reveals the number of long-term unemployed young people has more than doubled over the past three years, from 53,000 to 129,000.

Now 1 in 5 unemployed 18-24 year olds have been out of work for longer than 12 months.

The Jobs Guarantee scheme

The government’s recent commitment to increase the Jobs Guarantee scheme to 90,000 places and expand to 18–24-year-olds will make an important difference to young people.

But the TUC says these figures underline the need for the government to go further and faster on the Jobs Guarantee.

The union body is calling for the government to:

• Shorten eligibility period. Young people currently have to wait 18 months on Universal Credit to be eligible for the scheme, which the TUC says is far too long. Earlier eligibility would be particularly beneficial for those living in area with few vacancies and high unemployment.
• Accelerate delivery and increase the number of placements. Recent increases in placements are welcome. But the current target of 90,000 placements over three years, averaging 30,000 annually, is still insufficient given the scale of the challenge. There still need to be further increases in the number of available placements.

The TUC would also like to see the scheme expanded to those not on Universal Credit, as nearly half (44%) of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) don’t receive an out-of-work benefit.

The TUC says that whilst Job Guarantee schemes need initial upfront investment, they result in a return on investment for the government.

Recent TUC analysis revealed that the benefit to cost ratio of the programme is estimated at 2.81. Every £1,000 of (net) government spending on the programme generates £2,810 of net revenue for the Exchequer. With these outcomes assessed over 30 years, the scheme pays for itself within a decade.

The union body says that early experience of good quality paid work can make a massive difference to young people’s job prospects in the long term.

Trumpflation threat to young workers and unemployed young people

The TUC says “Trumpflation” is a threat to workers up and down the country – especially young workers.

The union body is calling on government to pull out all the stops to protect households and firms from the economic fallout of Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran.

With young workers especially vulnerable to economic chaos, the TUC says that must include future action to increase the scale and scope of the Jobs Guarantee.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said:

Too many young people in the UK are stuck out of work for extended periods of time. And that has long-lasting effects for their own prospects and for the country as a whole. We know that early experience of good quality paid work makes a huge difference to young people’s prospects across their lifetimes.

The government was right to expand the Jobs Guarantee to more young people and encourage businesses to hire those who have been out of work for more than six months. But ministers must now be ready to turbocharge the scheme, going further and faster.

Trumpflation is a real threat to workers up and down the country, particularly young workers living in parts of the country where unemployment is already higher.

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That’s why eligibility and number of places should be expanded, and young people shouldn’t have to wait until they have been unemployed for 18 months to access support.

Featured image via the Canary

Shadow Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) boss Helen Whately couldn’t help but get in the Tories’ punches on disabled people. On Tuesday 24 March, the latest DWP wet wipe (in a long line of DWP wet wipes) took to GB News to shit on those claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP):

Government could save £2bn by bringing back face-to-face PIP assessments.

Ministers say they’re doing that, but the numbers tell a different story. So do the empty assessment centres.

Time to get a grip of the benefits bill. pic.twitter.com/ANMZWDBzAv

— Helen Whately MP (@Helen_Whately) March 23, 2026

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The main thrust was that disabled people doing PIP assessments over the phone are just ‘faking it’, because of course it was.

DWP PIP: Whately on a warpath over remote assessments

Whately was referring to an ‘analysis’ the Tories hyped up in shitrag the Sun. Supposedly, this found that:

when a person is assessed face-to-face for PIP, 44 per cent end up getting the benefit.

But when it is done remotely the rate is far higher at 57 per cent.

Of course, the article is sparse on the actual detail of quite how the Tories came to these numbers. However, it does seem to chime with figures DWP minister Stephen Timms previously put out via an answer to a parliamentary written question.

Regardless, the analysis doesn’t actually prove what Whately wants it to. It went on to claim that:

It has led to an extra 259,000 successful claims a year on average — equal to a higher annual welfare bill of £1.8billion.

That remote assessments have higher success rates doesn’t evidence that people are “gaming the system” as she suggested. More likely, what it shows is that when disabled people are given assessments appropriate to their health circumstances, they’re better able to articulate their lived realities and resulting needs.

The fact is, the latest DWP statistics show that 65% of PIP decisions cleared at tribunal between October 2020 and September 2025 were overturned in the applicants’ favour. The DWP has also changed its decision and awarded PIP to 20% of people who made an appeal. In other words, the DWP is wrongly refusing PIP to disabled people who are eligible for it.

And disabled folks who’ve applied for PIP report plenty of terrible experiences with assessors.

The PIP assessment is not easy. People who should get it, don’t. The assessment is long and gruelling, and regularly degrading.

The analysis’s £1.8m savings claim is total nonsense — because there’s no proof those 259,000 people weren’t eligible.

But naturally, Whately and her colleagues — who aren’t medically trained — want to decide who’s ‘deserving’ and ‘disabled enough’ to get support.

Face-to-face assessments unsafe and inaccessible

Hilariously, DWP boss Pat McFadden and DWP minister Torsten Bell were both scoring political points on X:

The Tories reduced face to face appointments to almost zero when in power.

They then agreed new contracts embedding the reduction just months before the election.

Now they attack their own record and legacy while we sort out what they left behind. https://t.co/zYsCWfieMG

— Pat McFadden (@patmcfaddenmp) March 23, 2026

Sigh. Absolutely no shame. Of course it was the Tories that:
– dialled down face to face assessments
– signed contracts with providers to embed that decision post-covid
– now assume journalists won’t bother asking them basic questions when they attack their own record https://t.co/TQ2BIiBRCH

— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) March 23, 2026

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Of course, both were evidently loathe to mention that the former Conservative government brought in this shift to remote assessments because of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. A pandemic where repeated government mismanagement forced clinically vulnerable disabled people to ‘shield’ in lockdown long after their non-disabled peers.

A pandemic in which disabled people were up to 3 times more likely to die. In the early months of the pandemic, learning disabled people were 30 times more likely to die from it.

Props to the Tories for forgetting again that clinically vulnerable disabled people exist. Forcing face-to-face appointments will put many disabled people at risk. And this would also be a barrier for many disabled and chronically ill folks who either simply can’t travel to appointments, or risk worsening their health by doing so:

Disgusting. It can be difficult for people to travel to assessments, axing phone interviews will just mean people who genuinely need help will be unable to get it… and the face-to-face meetings are NOT more accurate, as I have experienced. The DWP needs major change now.

— Andrew Fisher (@merman1974) March 23, 2026

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PIP success rates have plummeted

The rate of DWP approving applications for PIP has also actually plummeted:

Since face to face assessments have moved to mainly virtual ones, the success rate for PIP applications has plummeted from 52% to 35%. The idea that it is making it easier for “fakers” is so inaccurate and widespread that I have lost 3 stone from eye rolling alone. https://t.co/qfJHWInZJ7

— Spin Decoders (@leith1076) March 23, 2026

Specifically, successful awards sat at 55% in 2018-19 and decreased slightly to an average of 52% the following financial year.

By comparison, as Benefits and Work recently reported, this rate has continued to drop. For the quarter ending January 2026, the DWP approved just 35% of new claims. This was down from 43% the same quarter last year. In other words, a little over one in three applicants are actually getting awards of PIP. It’s also a decrease from the previous quarter that saw success rates reach just 38% (also a fall from 44% Q3 in 2024).

So contrary to the Tories’ rhetoric, no, the DWP isn’t handing out PIP more readily since the former Tory government implemented remote assessments.

DWP — more people should get PIP anyway

But why would Whately and co. let facts get in the way of a good vilifying soundbite?

When Whately bandies about her dubious figures, it’s the number of people claiming PIP she’s attacking. And of course, in this context, it’s easy to spin that PIP claims are spiralling. Because quite simply, more people are indeed applying for it.

It’s not rocket science to recognise that off the back of a disabling pandemic, more people will in fact be disabled.

What’s more, it’s also a good thing more disabled people are actually applying for it. As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey recently highlighted:

There’s also the fact that just 3.9 million people claim PIP. The DWP and press make this sound like a huge number, but it’s only a fraction of how many disabled people there are in the country. 16.8 million people self-identify as disabled in the UK, so that’s less than a quarter of them claiming PIP.

There might be a huge uproar over ‘1 in 10 people claiming PIP’, but disabled people make up 25% of the population. It should be 1 in 4.

Instead then, it’s the above proportion figures that matter. Let’s not forget that PIP is to level the playing field for disabled people. It helps with the extra £1,095 a month costs disabled people incur.

However, the Tories would still have you believe it’s bullshit about the “bloated benefits bill”.

It didn’t go unnoticed either that Whately was banging on about this days after the Labour government announced its call for evidence for the Timms Review.

Ironically, the review should address all the above issues with the assessment system. As the Canary pointed out however, this is already shaping up to be a monumental stitch-up.

The simple fact of the matter is that to politicians on both sides of the House, disabled people are a convenient scapegoat to justify their austerity agendas. While these cronies of corporate capitalism run this country, disabled lives will only ever be a political football to kick to the sidelines.

Featured image via the Canary