06. Who Killed the Welfare State?

 06.

Who Killed the Welfare State?

 

 

The Welfare State is dead.

 

Volunteers are sought to prepare the funeral. Interested parties must attend Capita offices for a suitability assessment; a 43-and-a-half-question form is required, and a psychological report will be conducted by one of our non-psychological advisors to make a choice not aligned with the volunteer's mental health. Travel expenses will be reimbursed, subject to algorithm approval.

 

Has the British government become a mere fundraiser for private service companies? Starting like this might seem absurd, until compared to our recent past. The contrast is bleak. A working-class student in 1960s London enjoyed free studies and a non-repayable council grant that covered living in the capital. They did not worry about Universal Credit hurdles or Student Finance demanding 203 prerequisites. That is a Welfare State. Or what do we understand by Welfare?

 

The same applied to illness or disability: the system trusted your doctor. It protected you, never treating you as a default fraudster. Today, however, we cannot trust the State. In an era obsessed with mental health, the State actively destroys it, yet happily pays the private coach (who I no longer even know if they are a real psychologist or if they diagnose me genuinely or just to earn extra money). What was once a citizens' safety net has been dismantled into a wealth-transfer machine.

 

Student Finance is paradigmatic. The maximum Maintenance Loan, existing only for the first undergraduate degree (forget a master's, even if companies demand one), cannot even cover an average London room's rent. This is demonstrated by the devastating Priced Out? 2024 report by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

 

Ultimately, it is a loan: the State subjects young people to massive debt not to guarantee education, but to transfer money directly to mega-landlords and lucrative private student accommodation (PBSA). The student is a mere intermediary to subsidise the property sector.

 

This extractive logic infects everything. We pay suffocating taxes, but the state safety net is full of profitable holes. Universal Credit allocates billions to exorbitant private rents, because council houses –if they still exist– are inaccessible. And for disability support (PIP), you face private corporations collecting multi-million-pound contracts to subject you to humiliating assessments, ignoring NHS doctors .

 

The system has not collapsed; it was dismantled. Basic services –education, health, housing– are private businesses enriching four major corporations, plunging thousands of families into debt and forcing them to scrape a living. Or even lie to the system just to survive.

 

Meanwhile, London houses fill with 10 or 15 tenants sleeping in living rooms, whilst higher education remains for wealthy families. What is the State for, then? Perhaps we should rethink it. In the meantime, generations of surviving students will be lost, whilst those responsible enjoy millionaire pensions paid by those same taxes. Shall we arrest the murderer?