Reform is trying to distract from its problems by attacking ordinary people
Cuts to personal independence payments and welfare for foreign nationals are simply bad ideas — but Nigel Farage’s party only cares about one thing
Having spent much of the summer fighting a self-triggered byelection against a man with a bin on his head, Nigel Farage is now once again subject to a parliamentary investigation into his financial declarations. Reform UK has plenty of reason to want the political conversation to move elsewhere. To do so, the party has announced that, if elected, it would implement one of the largest cuts to the welfare state in a generation, taking aim at disabled people and foreign nationals.
Their plans include abolishing personal independence payments (Pips) and the health element of universal credit. In their place would come a health security allowance, with cash support restricted to the most “severe, enduring and high-risk cases”. By Reform’s own estimate, almost 2.9 million people would have their payments removed or modified. Most employers would also be expected to carry far more of the cost of long-term sickness, while foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status, would be barred from claiming almost all benefits.
Related content
Reform claims its plans would save more than £50bn a year by the end of this parliament, a figure they have arrived at from their own internal modelling. Robert Jenrick, the party’s Treasury spokesperson, has argued the cuts are necessary, describing the current system as “suicidal empathy” and “a strange perversion of compassion”. His claim is not just that the government spends the money inefficiently, but also that the way the support is provided is morally wrong.
Jenrick is, quite frankly, wrong. Pip is neither an out-of-work benefit nor a substitute for wages. It helps to cover the additional costs of being disabled in a country that puts additional barriers in front of disabled people. For some, those payments are what makes employment possible in the first place. Removing them can do the opposite of pushing people to work more. It can make work harder or even impossible.
Over years of reporting, I have spoken to numerous Pip recipients, usually every time a government tries and fails to reform the system. On so many occasions, people have told me how the payment is the only thing that helps them live and work independently. It is, as one claimant told me last year, a “lifeline” without which they would not be able to do their job. Taking it away would create more problems than Reform thinks — or claims — it is solving.
Then there’s the “foreign nationals” aspect of Reform’s proposal, which also struggles under scrutiny.
Migrants who are in Britain on temporary work, study or family visas are already unable to access public funds. Official figures show that the vast majority of universal credit claimants, almost 84.5%, are UK citizens. So, in reality, Reform is targeting a small minority that will include people with indefinite leave to remain and those with settled status, many of whom have lived, worked and paid taxes in the UK for years. The rights of EU citizens with settled status are protected by the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Any government that wants to change them will have to reopen negotiations with the EU and that would probably take years.
It’s why the policy was described to me as “half-baked” by a former Tory minister. But then, this entire episode is as much about bravado as it is about policy.
Related content
Farage’s summer taking on Count Binface and attempting to dodge scrutiny over the £5m gift he got from crypto donor Christopher Harborne has come at a cost. His net favourability fell to -46 in July, his lowest rating in 10 years since YouGov began tracking it. In recent polling, Reform has fallen to second place behind the Labour Party and its average opinion poll rating is now 7.5 percentage points lower than the peak it reached in September 2025.
For a party that relies heavily on the appearance of momentum, this is not good news. But it explains the desire to shift the conversation back to two subjects Reform likes talking about: welfare spending and immigration.
As one senior Labour MP said to me, it says volumes: “This is what Reform is really about, going after the most vulnerable, scapegoating people, whether it’s immigrants or disabled people, because they don’t have any real answers to anything.”
Reform wants this to look like a hard-headed assault on a broken welfare system. Look more closely and it is something that has become too familiar in British politics: a party under pressure reaching for the easiest people to blame.
Shehab Khan is Zeteo UK’s political editor.
