I can’t help but see this as ‘creeping fascism’:
It’s not merely the injustice here but the bureaucratic laziness, a wilful torpor, the refusal to even ask the question ‘is this right?’ The willingness to cause hurt; and of course the impact, which is major, on the poor, the powerless victims of indifference (the sort that is encouraged by the likes of Farage and his stoolies) built into the very systems that are supposedly there to provide support.
The Labour government under Starmer is of course where the proverbial buck stops. I always assumed, it turns out naively, that the civil service acted in accord with the government, indeed, was strongly directed by elected policies and strategies, but clearly not. Instead it is a self-serving, covert power centre of weasels. (I am trying to avoid the idea here of a ‘covert state’ – or, as the BigBaby in the Amerikan White House calls it, the Deep State – but it sure feels like an independent hub bureaucratic power.