As far as moral panics go, complaining about people on benefits feels a bit retro, a bit early 2010s – it’s the flash mob, the Rebecca Black of right-wing talking points. Public opinion on benefits has softened a lot since the early years of austerity, and these days even the right-wing media isn’t so bothered about the issue, preferring to focus its energy on the more zeitgeisty targets of asylum seekers and transgender teenagers (which is hardly an improvement.) So it just seems kind of weird that Labour are going so hard on benefits-bashing – a top-down policy direction that no one has even asked for.

In the last week alone the party has announced two splashy, dystopian new policies: Health Secretary Wes Streeting suggested giving unemployed people weight-loss injections to get them back to work, arguing that “widening waistbands” are putting an intolerable strain on the economy. This was shortly followed by Liz Kendall outlining plans to have job coaches visit people living with severe mental illnesses – including those who are currently in hospital. Of course, if you’re recovering from a suicide attempt or a psychotic episode, the government forcing you to complete an online module about CV-writing is exactly what you need to pull yourself back from the brink.

Labour’s approach to the benefits system seems to be based on the assumption that there are vast numbers of people who could be working, but aren’t. But this is at odds with the reality of what unemployment looks like today, when around 40 per cent of people on universal credit are in work and the majority of the remainder are disabled. It’s hard to qualify for disability benefits in the first place, and those who do live under the constant threat of being sanctioned and are forced to survive on a meagre income, which is often completely inadequate to meet the additional costs of being disabled. No one in Britain is living a relaxed and pampered life at the expense of the taxpayer.

So who is Labour even pandering to with this? Why bother reviving an old scapegoat which even the Daily Mail barely seems to care about? It’s partly because they are cheapskates, ideologically committed to an austerity mindset which demands spending as little money as possible. According to Dr Tom O’Grady, an academic at UCL and the author of The Transformation of British Welfare Policy, the problems Labour are trying to fix with these new policies would be better solved by spending more money on the services which we’re not spending enough money on, including mental health treatment and public health. Instead of asking why some people are failing to have a good diet or getting enough exercise (both of which are correlated with poverty and regional deprivation), or why lots of people with long-term mental health conditions are out of work, Labour is looking for quick, easy fixes. “It’s cheaper to inject people with weight loss drugs than it is to solve the wider social problem of obesity; it’s cheaper to give people work coaches than to transform mental health services,” Dr O’Grady tells Dazed.

It is true that recent years have seen a large rise in spending on disability benefits, much of which is linked to long-term mental health conditions among people under the age of 40. But this doesn’t mean people are faking it or gaming the system. Mental health has got worse in the UK over the last decade (which is related to the same austerity approach that Labour is now trying to continue) and, more positively, there has been an increase in the recognition of mental health conditions. According to Dr O’Grady, there is also a lot of evidence which shows that people who are on disability benefits want to work. “Disabled people to be full members of society, and rightly or wrongly, under capitalism that means going to work. People don’t want to be sitting at home living on Universal Credit – they would like to be out doing things,” he says.

These interventions are placing the fault at the door of the benefit claimants themselves: if only they had a bit more work coaching, or if only they were a bit less fat, then they could get a job

This is how Liz Kendall has tried to justify her new policy, claiming that there are mental health benefits to being employed. While that may be true (it’s certainly not true of all jobs), the problem is that the support being offered is so crap and so patronising, and that it comes with the threat of coercion: failure to comply with the proposed measures will, probably, result in sanctions. “Kendall is right in the sense that most disabled people want to work, but I think the vision she has for achieving that is very narrow, and it’s one that risks a large amount of stigma. People need genuine, meaningful support that tackles the personal barriers that they face – including access to mental health services, which are vastly underfunded – not just being forced to fill out a CV in a hospital bed,” says Dr O’Grady. Unfortunately, Labour seems determined to go for the cheapest option.

“Many people living with severe mental illness can and do want to work, and the right support could unlock their potential,” agrees Brian Dow, Deputy Chief Executive of Rethink Mental Illness. “But the timing and quality of employment support is key; a tick-box exercise which hastily forces people into the wrong jobs could have devastating consequences. “We know from our own work supporting people into employment that it’s important to address the wider barriers that people face, such as finances and housing, alongside support with interview skills and CVs. Some people are simply too unwell to work, and they deserve a period of respite in hospital that promotes recovery as well as the right financial support to live with dignity in their communities.”

Even if people who are unemployed – for whatever reason – are no longer quite as reviled as they used to be within mainstream discourse, Labour still seems to think there is some mileage left in presenting itself as being tough on them. “There’s a bit of dog whistle built into the way it’s being talked about,” says Dr O’Grady. “It’s not being said out loud, but the implication is that these people are too lazy. To me it seems like these interventions are placing the fault at the door of the benefit claimants themselves: if only they had a bit more work coaching, or if only they were a bit less fat, then they could get a job.”

Maybe Labour is still trying to chase conservative older voters in marginal seats, maybe it’s enacting these policies out of sincere ideological conviction – probably a bit of both. But if one thing seems clear, it’s that after ten years of the Tories squeezing every last drop out of the welfare state, there is nothing left to cut – at least not without further immiserating the most vulnerable people in Britain, many of whom are already struggling to survive.