In recent days, the Labour Party leadership has backpedalled from its support for a National Independent Living Support Service, back to the free personal care promised under the National Care Service, despite widespread opposition from Disabled members and allies within the party. However, in spite of what Thangam Debbonaire recently said to a Labour Women’s Conference composite meeting, it is incredibly easy to sell the arguments for funding independent living support to the general public.

First, Disabled people are the general public. Around 20 percent of the working-age population is Disabled, and research shows that nearly half of the 14 million people that live in poverty are Disabled or live with someone that is.

Disability continues to be an indicator of poverty, and social care charging is a huge reason for that. Disabled people should not have to live in poverty in order to pay for support that allows them to lead lives the rest of the population take for granted: no one should have to make the choice between heating, eating, and paying for their support, which is what the current scheme of minimum income guarantees creates.

The appeal often made to the middle classes around social care funding is that more is needed so that elderly people do not need to sell their homes to pay for support. This argument is far from necessary or desirable – most Disabled people do not have homes to sell.

Funding social care is also often posited as a cost to the state – as money going down the drain. This logic, as well as being morally flawed, makes no economic sense. Independent living support is an investment, both in people and in local and national economies.

Independent living demands that Disabled people are supported to fully participate in their communities, from cradle to grave, in all spheres of life. No more would Disabled people be consigned to a ‘clean and feed’ model of personal care where they are institutionalised in their own homes or in residential facilities; no more would support workers have to go from house to house to do full shifts, or do their shifts in 45-minute chunks.

Investment in comprehensive support that complies with the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCRPD) would mean that Disabled people are supported to live full lives, in the way that they want to live them. This would lead to the mass creation of new, green jobs, which would be sustainable with good terms and conditions. It would also result in more Disabled people being able to access the labour market, as well as being able to use community resources such as cafes and leisure centres – so local economies would flourish.

The current Labour leadership have also repeatedly underestimated the British public’s positive response to principled cases for the increased funding of public services – for making them free at the point of use, universal, and funded through taxation. 77 percent of people surveyed in 2017 said that ‘the NHS is crucial to British society and we must do everything we can to maintain it’.

As seen during Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, the nationalisation of key public services and infrastructure, with the reasoning that these services should be universal and available at the point of need, was incredibly popular. When the Labour Party makes a principled argument for public ownership and presents it as part of a larger vision for who society should work for, the general public can be and are convinced.

Social care requires a complete and utter transformation if it is to ever come close to achieving the goal of independent living for Disabled people. Starmer’s Labour Party has once again demonstrated it is unwilling to make the arguments for that transformation. This will cost them dearly.

Already, Disabled members have been leaving the party in droves, with thousands more ready to cut up their membership cards. The party has moved away from the radical policies of Corbyn and failed to challenge the government during a year where 60% of Covid deaths have been those of Disabled people; now the abandonment of an election pledge that Disabled groups fought for Starmer to adopt is, for many, the final nail in the coffin.

But it’s not just within the party that Starmer is losing support. Already, we have seen the electoral consequences that have resulted from the failure to articulate a socialist—or any—vision. The local council elections and the mayoral elections showed a stark picture for Labour: the story was widespread losses, except in areas like Preston and Manchester, where local councils and mayors were able to articulate their own vision for the future of locally and regionally controlled public services. Even in London, Sadiq Khan came within 230,000 votes of losing to Sean Bailey.

Thangam Debbonaire, who first made the announcement that Labour would be abandoning the policy of free social care and independent living, is also in a perilous position. Having alienated much of her CLP through such actions like describing the campaign to cancel rent payments in the first lockdown as ‘surprisingly un-Labour’ and coming down on the side of private landlords rather than renters, she is now facing threats of deselection. The recent statements backpedalling on the Labour leadership’s commitment to the National Independent Living Service have also alienated Disabled activists in Bristol.

The inability or unwillingness of the Labour leadership and the PLP to make the case for public sector investment in our communities has alienated many. Those outside the party, who may not have an in-depth understanding of political process, still recognise the effects that ten years of austerity—and, in some parts of the country, decades of underinvestment following deindustrialisation—has had on their public services. This will drive them even further away from voting for Labour in the future.

The Conservatives adapted during the pandemic, funnelling billions into the furlough scheme and exceeding £1 trillion in public funding. With schemes like ‘levelling up’ touted for historically neglected and underfunded areas and populations, the terrible local election results we witnessed in May are only likely to be repeated if the Labour leadership does not make its own commitments and provide its own vision for what our public services should do.

The crisis in social care requires a socialist solution. This necessitates a coalition between Disabled activists and trade unionists from the care sector, which must be supported by the Labour Party. That coalition already exists, albeit in an unfunded and precarious manner: the Independent Living Support Service Trade Unionists Subgroup brings together social care service users, Disabled activists, grassroots care workers, and trade union officials to work together to produce transformative solutions to the structural issues with our current social care system.

The labour movement must stand behind us as we fight for the Labour Party to reinstate its commitment to independent living, and present a bold, socialist vision for independent living to the nation.