Theresa May’s legacy tour has added another stop to its vapid agenda: pretending to care about disabled people

The outgoing prime minister’s ‘bold plan’ is a bit like offering a prisoner on a starvation diet of bread and water a couple of squares of chocolate before being sent back down to their cell

Apparently Theresa May has woken up to the fact that lots of Britons have disabilities and, as part of her “Gimme A Legacy” UK tour (the European dates have been cancelled), she wants to pretend that she cares about us.

Cue a “new drive to tackle barriers faced by disabled people”, released with fanfare in an attempt for the initiative to elbow its way into a news agenda currently dominated by the horror show that is Boris Johnson’s bid for PM.

Included is the promise of higher accessibility standards for new homes and an overhaul of statutory sick pay to help those on lower incomes. Best of all, we’re promised, wait for it, a new “Equalities Hub” in the Cabinet Office that will put disability policy “at the heart of government”.

“INJUSTICES [No 10’s capitals] faced by disabled people in the workplace, at home and in the community will be tackled head-on,” we are told.

I find that it’s usually sensible for me to have a sick bag to hand when governments spin that sort of guff and I have to read it, but on this occasion, it wasn’t enough. I nearly had to add an exploded head to the impairments I already have to deal with, such was the fury it induced.

The fact is the May government, like the one led by David Cameron that preceded it, has engaged in the smashing of wheelchairs and the busting up of crutches, while Timmy the guide dog has been sent out to provide target practice for the posher Tories when they return to the shires ahead of the grouse-shooting season that starts in August. The (in)glorious twelfth, as they call it.

The government has tortured and tormented disabled people with its testing regimes and then dropped the bomb of universal credit in an attempt to blow up those not caught by the machine gun fire. The reports documenting its scandalous mistreatment of British disabled people have been piling up. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission last year spoke of the “erosion” of rights in a Britain going backwards. The year before, there was the United Nations Committee on Disability Rights’ report. It found that government reforms have led to the “grave and systematic violations of the rights of disabled people”. The cross-party Work and Pensions Committee has produced a number of sharply critical reports, as have disabled people’s organisations such as Disability Rights UK.

The response to them has been an exercise in gaslighting on a grand scale, with ministers banging on about Britain as a “world leader in disabilities rights” without any apparent irony or shame.

Look, I’m not denying that some action to address the awful situation faced by too many disabled people when it comes to housing is welcome. Ditto reforms to sick pay. But they represent small beer when set against what the Conservative or Conservative-led governments of the past decade have been raining down on people with impairments.

When compared with them, May’s “bold plan” is a bit like a prisoner on a starvation diet of bread and water being offered a couple of squares of chocolate and a half a can of cola before being sent back down.

A serious attempt to tackle injustices faced by disabled people would start with a promise to unwind the worst of the government’s own cruelty. Too much to ask with the pending appointment of a wrecking ball of a successor? How about just getting the kids with autism and learning disabilities out of the bare cells they’re being bundled into? There was a (another) shocking report on that last month, courtesy of the children’s commissioner. Action on that front would represent something genuinely worthwhile.

But there’s no mention of any of it in the press notice for the “new drive”, which basically just serves up yet another vanity project so May can try to feel good about herself upon her return to the back benches with the epitaph of being the worst prime minister in British history.

Most disabled people would, I imagine, greet the turd sandwich she’s served up with some variant on Foxtrot Oscar if they weren’t too busy grappling with the hostile Britain May and her government have overseen. That there is her real legacy when it comes disabled Britons.