Disability cuts a cold but clear reminder Britain has little to offer the north of Ireland

People are rightly angry. The disability benefit cuts confirmed this week by the Chancellor will devastate the lives of those who will be forced to look for work despite previously being deemed eligible for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) via the rigorous processes in place at present. And here, in our area, those people – many of whom may not physically or mentally be able to work – will be trying to find jobs in a place where opportunities are few and unemployment among the highest anywhere on these islands.

It is a horrific act by a government that is prioritising security spending over the welfare of the people they were elected to represent. And those they were not elected to represent, like the disproportionate number of people here who have to rely on PIP just to be able to live, and who may now have that life-line taken away.

No-one in Northern Ireland voted Labour in, nor did the Conservatives gain much support when they fielded candidates in elections here. This latest in a litany of attacks on the most vulnerable by successive British governments is a cold but clear reminder of just how disenfranchised we are within a ‘United Kingdom’ that is anything but, with cash-strapped Stormont unlikely to be able to do anything that would mitigate it.

So we need to have a serious conversation about who governs us and why and we need to demand better. A fresh start in a new, reunified island of equals is looking increasingly like the best, if not the only hope we have collectively to escape the cycles of poverty and deprivation that has blighted the lives of too many people for generations in the north.