Just beads in a glass jar: this is how the Tories dehumanise migrants and those in need

The Conservatives, like Reform, are rooting their immigration policy in the language of welfare dependency. It’s deeply harmful

There is a video doing the rounds on social media in which Conservative MP Katie Lam pours beads into glass jars. Each bead represents 1,000 migrants and – we are led to assume – the containers they sit in, Britain. As Lam points to the number of people on indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and “all the welfare and services” they have access to, a jar ominously overflows. “State support should only be for citizens,” she says directly to the camera. “And if they are already here, they must not be able to go on benefits. Instead, they will need to leave.”

This is not just a social media clip from a rogue shadow minister. It is – potentially – actual Conservative policy. In recent days, the party has confirmed it would retrospectively strip residency rights (otherwise known as ILR) from people who claim benefits or whose dependents do, even if they have lived here for decades. On Wednesday, after a large backlash, officials said a new policy would be produced “in the coming weeks” but refused to rule out removing ILR.

I thought of this as I read research out on Thursday by the charity Turn2us that outlines how decades of negative attitudes and distrust towards social security have been “baked into” the system’s design. Researchers found that 64% of current claimants believe the Department for Work and Pensions is “trying to catch them out”. It is a damning indictment of past governments’ assaults on the safety net and a vital guide to Labour as it eyes up another go at so-called welfare reform. But the report also acts as something else: a warning of how ripe this country is to buy the myth that “foreigners” are milking the benefits system.

The Conservatives are not alone in rooting their immigration policy in the language of welfare dependency. When Reform launched its plan to abolish ILR last month, its leader, Nigel Farage, did so with the (unproved) claim that more than 50% of the people due to become eligible for the scheme in the next few years “are not working, have not worked and in all probability will never, ever work”.

It is not a coincidence that rightwing media and politicians are morphing the two gripes together, or that this is happening at the same time as the far right mobilises. Attacks on immigration and benefits both rely on similar ugly prejudice: certain members of society “contribute” and others “cost”, and in the extreme, leech off the superior healthy and white population.

It is often said nowadays that ideas that were once fringe in politics are becoming mainstream and that is certainly the case. But the truth is, many of these ideas – that certain groups are burdens, productivity equates to moral value, and social inequalities are a personal failure – have been mainstream for quite some time.

The claim that migrants are workshy drains on the British taxpayer thrives in a society that has long framed the benefits system as too generous and easily exploited. From single mothers under New Labour to disabled people during the coalition years, over the past 30 years, receiving state support has been successfully stigmatised. The benefit reforms over the past decade – from subsistence-level benefit rates and increased use of sanctions, to degrading disability assessments – have all in effect been “punishments” for people who dare to be poor or sick. Tying the benefits bill to immigration status is in many ways the next logical step, with claiming social security now reason enough to be deported.

Look out in the coming days for a debate about which types of state support count towards deportation – a sentence that, in itself, is quite remarkable to write. We have long known that not all social security is created equal. There are “good benefits” (think pensions and child benefit) and there are “bad benefits” (unemployment and disability), just as there are “good immigrants” (doctors and teachers) and “bad” ones (jobseekers or NHS patients). It will be easy enough for the right to sell the idea that, say, a young man on long-term sickness benefits is a drain on the public purse; much harder to do it with a GP on maternity leave. That one of the few details Tory officials have bothered to clarify about the policy is that older people will not lose their ILR for claiming the state pension gives a clear enough hint at what arguments are coming our way.

For an insight into how misinformation and stigma can be weaponised together, just look to the shadow work and pensions secretary, Helen Whately, who is incorrectly claiming on X that people on the Motability scheme get “free cars for acne”. There is a sense that the gloves are off, as politicians, legacy media and big tech platforms increasingly propagate far-fetched claims for profit and power. That the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty has just warned that welfare cuts in recent years have fuelled the rise of the far right and populism globally shows how circular all of this is. The politicians who want to cut your benefits are the same ones who will prosper from it.

Still, pull at the thread of the social safety net and it would not be a surprise to see the whole thing unravel. Does statutory sick pay for a bad back count? How about one-off support after a flood? What the hard right may find is that an uncomfortable truth will out: all of us at any given time could become sick or unemployed; most of us will experience old age. Far from what the dehumanisation of migrants would suggest, few things are a clearer sign of being human than to need some help. In the end, we are all just beads together in a jar.

Cover photo:  Danielle Rhoda/The Guardian