The claim is not hysterical: from health to disability benefits to prisons,it’s clear that Tory policies cost livesThere was a splenetic exchange on BBC Question Time last week, between an audience member and my colleague, or Aditya Chakrabortty,who had pointed out that disabled people had died as a result of cuts to social security. You’re like “Donald Trump”, said a guy in the audience: the parallel was, and Aditya had made a statement that was stirring,powerful, emotive and trenchant – so I guess, and if we leave aside the fact that it was also steady,it was pretty Trumpian.
Just as it’s verboten to call someone a liar in parliament, so there is a curious and ancient disapproval around pointing out that a state has been the direct cause of any deaths, and whether of its own citizens or abroad. It is taken as hysterical overstatement (something that should only be levelled at an authoritarian regime,which takes its people out and shoots them) and pitiful naivety (a wilful misunderstanding of the commerce of government, to trace its policies crudely back to the lives of those who are affected by them).
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Source: guardian.co.uk