Labour’s latest plan to save late-stage UK capitalism is its most disgusting yet

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit claimants are going to be sold-off, as such, by the Labour Party government to Big Pharma giant Lilly for weight-loss drug trials.

We’d like to say you ‘couldn’t make this stuff up’ – but Labour would just say ‘hold my Dom Perignon’. Little wonder the government is doing this, either – because lo and behold. Lilly has indirectly been lobbying Labour for ages – via a newly-elected MP.

DWP claimants to be weight-loss guinea pigs

Good Morning Britain, going full-on News Thump, ran a segment on Tuesday 15 October called “Jabs for Jobs”:

Unemployed people with obesity are going to be given the so-called 'king kong' of weight loss jabs to get them back to work.

This is under a plan being unveiled by the government. pic.twitter.com/4lpiOrHNqH

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) October 15, 2024

This was the news that Big Pharma devils Lilly had struck a deal with the UK government for a £279m investment in a new life sciences centre. However, part of this deal involved a trial of a weight loss drug to see if it got DWP claimants back into work.

According to the Guardian:

The plans announced at the summit will include real-world trials of weight-loss jabs’ impact on worklessness, according to the Telegraph.

A study by Health Innovation Manchester and Lilly will examine whether being put on the drugs will reduce worklessness and the impact on NHS service use, and will take place in Greater Manchester.

Weasel health secretary Wes Streeting wrote about the news in the right-wing Telegraph. He noted that:

The long-term benefits of these drugs could be monumental in our approach to tackling obesity. For many people, these weight-loss jabs will be life-changing, help them get back to work, and ease the demands on our NHS.

But along with the rights to access these new drugs, there must remain a responsibility on us all to take healthy living more seriously.

But to paint the obesity crisis as being about weight loss and eating healthily shows Streeting’s wilful obtuseness in the face of selling this DWP horror show to the public.

You want something tasty

As George Orwell once wrote:

Would it not be better if [poor people] spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t.

When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.

Oh, nothing changes – does it?

Labour avoiding the point

Labour and Streeting could, of course, tackle:

• The UK’s addiction crisis, caused by depression-inducing corporate capitalism, that means people are dependent on sugar to make them feel happy and give them energy.
• Food manufacturers’ use of cheap vegetable and seed oils that human’s cannot metabolise or digest properly – therefore, they sit as fat in our bodies.
• Our economy’s reliance on jobs that mean we sit in chairs all day.
• The drive for every member of a household to have to go our to work – meaning meals are rushed.
• Poverty – which means poor people cannot afford to cook healthy food, or even eat three meals a day without state support.
• Time poverty – which means poor people don’t have the time to cook healthy food even if they can afford it.
• The fact DWP claimants are not provided with enough to live on – therefore, all of the above happens.

But of course Labour won’t tackle this – because it wouldn’t be in the interests of the big businesses the party is obsessed with noshing off.

So, instead poor DWP claimants – too stupid to look after themselves – are now going to be human lab rats; given pharmaceuticals on top of the numerous other pharmaceuticals they’re probably already on, to coerce them back into work.

DWP claimants: get Love Island sexy AND save us money, too

As the Telegraph noted:

Up to 3,000 obese patients – a mixture of those in and out of work, and on sickness leave – will be recruited for a five-year study that will explore whether the medication boosts productivity and could bring more people back to the workplace.

They key word here is ‘coercion’.

No one is saying Labour is that dystopian – yet – that they’re going to force DWP claimants to take weight-loss drugs or face having their benefits stopped. The trial will obviously we hope be voluntary.

But what is perfectly reasonable to say is that Labour is coercing overweight DWP claimants into being human guinea pigs – with a promise of not only looking more Love Island Instagrammable but also getting a job at the end of it.

‘Take this drug and you’ll be sexier, healthier, AND have more money’.

In any other context, that would be seen as coercion, and likely illegal. But of course, in our Eugenicist society its perfectly acceptable. It’s even more acceptable when the party in government has been lobbied by Lilly.

Lobbying by Lilly of Labour

The Canary’s Hannah Sharland dug into Lilly’s links to the Labour Party.

The Political Lobbying & Media Relations (PLMR) Group’s healthcare and life sciences arm – Healthcomms Consulting – acts as the secretariat for the APPG on Obesity. Eli Lilly, alongside Slimming World, sponsors this cross-party group. The most recent available register shows Healthcomms was active in this role as recently as February 2024.

Labour’s candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich Kevin Craig set up the firm in 2006. However, Labour suspended Craig after the Gambling Commission launched an investigation into him. This was for betting against himself in the upcoming election. Since Starmer took the Labour leadership reins, Craig had made £100,000 in donations to the party. After his suspension, it announced it would return this.

However, Jack Abbott – a senior account manager at the firm – was elected in July. On top of this PLMR has donated nearly £25,000 between four MPs, including Abbott, that they have registered since the election. The firm also hosted a number of fringe events at Labour’s recent annual conference.

On top of this, Lilly’s boss was whining like a little bitch before the election, as well. As BBC News reported:

Dave Ricks… said he had considered building a factory in the UK in the last decade, but chose another country instead.

He warned current planning processes were an “impediment” to building factories at speed, unlike in the US and Ireland.

“Mostly what they do is they pre-reserve land, they promise to cut through the red tape and layers of government,” Mr Ricks said.

So, no coincidence then that Starmer screamed at the UK Investment Summit that:

It’s time to upgrade the regulatory regime, make it fit for the modern age, harness every opportunity available to Britain.

We will rip up the bureaucracy that blocks investment. We will march through the institutions and make sure that every regulator in this country – especially our economic and competition regulators – take growth as seriously as this room does.

The demise of an empire in real time

He forgot to say that:

We’ll also pimp all our poor people out to you, to do whatever you want with.

Even Good Morning Britain’s resident doctor couldn’t hide his concerns over the plan, not least the side effects:

Left: Wes Streeting wants to give obese people weight loss injections to get them back to work

Right: Dr Hilary Jones explains how this is a very bad and a very expensive idea, especially given the side effects from these drugs, and that when people stop, the weight comes back… pic.twitter.com/vWvhsUxoeG

— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) October 15, 2024

So, there we have it. The West’s late-stage capitalism is failing to such an extent that the UK government, in bed with Big Pharma, is now selling-off DWP claimants in an effort to extract the last dregs of economic value from them.

We did try to warn you about Starmer.

Featured image via the Canary