Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) was famous for his "war on poverty", designed to eradicate the conditions that led to destitution. At times, it feels like the Conservative Party have an undeclared "war" on Britain's poor, designed to punish those segments of society that they feel are unworthy.
"Fakers"
Perhaps the easiest way to explain the mindset that seems to exist in parts of the Conservative Party is this: their contempt for those unworthy of their pity comes from the belief that they believe that most people who are homeless, unemployed, disabled, or just poor are lazy "fakers". In this mindset, there are very few people who are "really" homeless, or "really" can't get a job, or a "really" disabled, or are "really" poor.
This is the most rational explanation behind the government's longstanding policy of austerity and welfare reform. Those in government simply refuse to believe there is a "problem" that needs their attention; the only "problem" as far as they're concerned is the lazy fakers who have been stealing the government's money (and, it is implied, added to the myth of the Labour government's self-inflicted fiscal crisis). This is the pervasive attitude that has permeated the media for years, matched by the government's own rhetoric on benefit fraud.
This rhetoric has extended out to the whole gamut of social policy. Basically, anyone who wants any money or help from the government is a source of instant suspicion, whose motives are assumed to be suspect. From the degrading treatment that many disabled people must endure to get government help, to those simply trying to claim financial support while unemployed, the system is now designed to find any way possible to withdraw help. Part of this comes from the long legacy of "austerity", where saving money in any way possible, regardless of how inhumane it is, is the first priority. If it means that disabled people are left to fend for themselves, well it's just one of those things. If it means unemployed people having to skip meals to stay alive, well, so be it. If it means people being evicted and left homeless, it can't be helped.
In this way, it could be argued that homelessness is a form of government-sanctioned punishment on those who are unable to look after themselves, either mentally or financially. Psychological weakness is the worst crime of all, as far as the government is concerned. As the government refuses to accept that the reasons for homelessness often come from genuine social and familial problems, the government therefore sees homelessness as a "lifestyle choice". This view was shared by a local policeman in the town of Ely, Cambridgeshire, who stated that there were no "real" homeless people in the town; those on the street were all "fakers".
"Trained indifference"
This attitude of those in the lowest rungs of society being there through either psychological weakness or by choice is prevalent throughout the Conservative Party. Once this view is accepted, it follows that those who are "weak" or "lazy" must be either punished or cut off from access to official channels, as this is seen as the only effective way to alter their behaviour. Those at the sharp end of this inhumane policy are seen on the streets, with the soaring numbers of rough sleepers in the UK (by some estimates at ten thousand) making them look like modern-day "refugees" of the government's undeclared "war" on the lazy and weak-willed.
The "war" is always in an officially-undeclared state because the government would never openly admit that its actions are designed to "punish"; it simply cuts off government help whenever possible and lets nature take its course. That way, the victim's fate whether to "sink or swim" can be pinned on the individual, and not the government. As far its concerned, the government's own hands remain clean. If the homeless person froze to death in the winter cold, it was because he refused to take responsibility for his own poor decisions. Officially, of course, such situations would always be a "tragedy", but a tragedy of the person's own making. That way, the government can keep its hands clean.
The government's policy towards those deprived and vulnerable segments of society is officially one of help; it could hardly publicly claim otherwise and still be considered to be maintaining civilised society. But that "official" policy of help comes with the huge caveat that the government only believes a small fraction of those deprived and vulnerable people in society are in genuine need; the rest are liars who are there by choice.
The austerity agenda is also part of a wider aim to fundamentally change the relationship between government and the people: namely, to remove the idea from people's minds that government is there to help you. By cutting funding to social care services, and by the simultaneous "welfare reforms", the government is making the idea of getting help from them seem more and more onerous, to the point that people stop trying. To a Conservative, this idea seems entirely natural, as an encouragement towards greater self-sufficiency and individual responsibility. But this idea of course forgets the social reality, that no-one is ever completely responsible for their own fate from cradle to grave. No man is an island.
Austerity can therefore be seen as a tool of social transformation; a form of social engineering and psychological manipulation. It is about changing how British people think. One wonders if the government's indifference to, for example, the very visible rise in rough sleeping isn't implicitly a kind of psychological "shock therapy" on the British public; Britain's streets being turned into a kind of open-air laboratory for social engineering, where the sheer frequency of rough sleepers gradually creates a muted indifference in people minds, rather like how long exposure to pornography has allegedly changed the way that young men think about sex. This "trained indifference" would then be part of the agenda of "psychological manipulation", bringing public acquiescence to the Conservative Party's "war" on the weaker elements of society. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see what the logical conclusion of this strategy would be.
Psychological preparation?
With the streets of "austerity" Britain sometimes bearing the atmosphere of an open-air theatre of the grotesque, there's a case to be made that this might also be a kind of psychological preparation for the real austerity to come after Brexit. If people think that "austerity" is bad now, this may just be the beginning, after Britain leaves the EU and the single market.
All the reasoned voices (including the EU itself) declare that leaving the single market would be disastrous for Britain's economy. The reason why is because Britain simply doesn't have the infrastructure or know-how to efficiently deal with the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved in trading with the EU as a country outside the single market; in short, when all the costs of the extra bureaucracy involved are added up, businesses may well find it no longer financially viable to trade with the EU. The logistical nightmare of crossing to and from the single market is only one aspect of this that could quickly see the economy seize up in a matter of days.
I've gone into some of the details about who could benefit from this chaos before, but as with "austerity", the ones who will be the victims first in this kind of Brexit scenario would be the vulnerable and deprived. The kind of "shock therapy" from austerity since 2010 has been more a "slow-burner", where social problems have accumulated only gradually, until the issue reaches public awareness on the streets in the form of mass rough sleeping, and in local councils going bankrupt through a combination of mismanagement and lack of funding. A "Hard Brexit" scenario would be sudden and on a scale hard to comprehend, given its lack of precedent.
This is a situation that has the hallmarks of a government willing to preside over a society where some parts of it almost resemble a "failed state". Except this is one where the government seems to want to fail.
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