Tory mini-budget: Nasty Party's track record on austerity-related deaths looks set to get worse – Eleanor Bird

Just when we didn’t think the Nasty Party could get any nastier, ‘presenting… the Tory mini-budget!’

Liz Truss's government is economically incompetent and morally bankrupt (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Mini, perhaps, in terms of how much thought went into it, rather than the degree of damage it’ll inevitably cause.

Although, you could be forgiven for thinking that instead of a kneejerk move, this is simply the latest in a series of calculated acts of class war from an economically incompetent and morally bankrupt UK Government.

The banner of British nationalism (that the Labour Party quite literally stood under at their conference this weekend) has laid bare the havoc that unionism can wreak in the cold, harsh light of reason.

Even in the few short days since the Chancellor’s announcement, the pitfalls of the Union at any cost will have sailed perilously close to unaffordable for even the staunchest opponent to that dirty word – self-determination.

With support for independence among younger voters running consistently between 60 and 70 per cent, this is the future for Scotland, but how long is this cohort expected to accept diminished life chances and regressive policies they didn’t vote for?

The real-world consequences of Tory callousness are being felt all too strongly through ransacked environmental regulations and a labour market decimated by Brexit, to say nothing of the swingeing cuts to public services and social security over the past 12 years.

A report released in 2017 by the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, not only stated the British welfare system disadvantaged, marginalised, and disempowered people but actively placed them in vulnerable conditions.

The report also highlighted what it described as “austerity-related deaths”, finding that the incidence of suicides among out-of-work disability benefit claimants more than doubled after the introduction of fit-for-work assessments in 2008.

It is interesting then that earlier this year, UK ministers refused to publish official reports on the impact of Tory welfare reforms, including research into the deaths of benefit claimants.

So, to all the Tory ministers out there planning the next socioeconomic assault, I’d seek your consideration on one simple thing. Rather than another mini-budget, why don’t you just give us all a Mini Magnum? They’re disappointingly small, but at least you’ll only have ice cream on your hands.