RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Everyone is talking about Rachel Reeves and her tears… but we’re all missing the REAL story on the outrageous scam that shames Britain

You’re lucky to have me today. I had planned to take my new, taxpayer-subsidised Audi A8 long wheelbase job out for a spin, maybe down to Shoeburyness for a Rossi’s ice cream and a pint of whelks.

Nothing beats a nifty 99 (only the crumbliest, flakiest, etc) in this weather and seeing as everybody else on the beach seemed to be ‘working from home’, judging by those pictures in the papers, I thought: why not?

But the M25 was a bit grumpy as usual, and in the end I decided to give it a miss and hit the wordface instead. Plus, what with the parking apps, well, you know the score….

Anyway, until this week I hadn’t realised I was top of the list for a new limo, courtesy of the Motability Scheme.

Browsing the extensive catalogue of ‘disabilities’ which entitle you to the full ‘Ullo, John, gotta new motor’ scam, it dawned on me that I now qualified, in the words of the Bard of Upminster, aka the great Ian Dury, as a legitimate raspberry ripple. (Cockney rhyming slang. Look it up.)

The disability debate has been overshadowed by the Rachel Reeves meltdown and the tendency of the Boys In The Bubble to concentrate on the politics, as if anyone in the real world gives a monkey’s.

No, what struck me was the fact that as of last year the thick end of 600,000 people in Britain today have cars bankrolled, at least in part, by the Department of Work and Pensions. In other words: those of us who bother working and paying taxes these days.

How many?

I’m sorry, I’ll just write that again. According to the latest figures available, 589,550 benefit claimants are getting cars on the dole.

(We’re not talking the Jarrow marchers here. Today they’d all have been swanning down the Great North Road to Westminster in those classic sports cars favoured by Poirot’s sidekick Captain Hastings, not wearing out the boot leather, chugging Newkie Brown and living on designer stottie cakes from Costa.)

They are just a small part of the nine million of our fellow citizens who are described as ‘economically inactive’ – including an entire cohort of bone-idle Club 18-30-year-olds whom Miss Jean Brodie would have described as ‘in their prime’.

For the record, I haven’t got a new A8 long wheelbase on the taxpayer. But running down the government ‘disability’ checklist, I’d certainly be entitled to one

Why aren’t they working? Beats me, guv. Because they can’t be bothered, apparently. Turns out 1,000 people a day are signing on, claiming everything from drug misuse to Mental Elf Ishoos.

Which got me wondering why I was wasting my time churning out a couple of columns a week when I could be kept, gratis, in the style to which I’d like to be accustomed?

So I checked out the DWP list to see if there might be a drink in it for me. Who knew alcohol misuse was grounds for a car under Motability? Depends what you mean by alcohol misuse. Does a three-bottle lunch with Farage this week count? If so, bring on the Bentley.

Free cars for alkies? You couldn’t, etc.

Food intolerance is another box ticked. I can’t stand roast pork, sea bass or service station Egg McMuffins. And broccoli churns my stomach. A Range Rover would be handy.

‘Failure to thrive’. Eh? What does that even mean? But 20 new motors went out of the door to ‘sufferers’ from it.

Tourette’s? When did swearing uncontrollably like Larry David’s chef in Curb Your Enthusiasm become grounds for a free Volvo, FFS?

Frozen shoulder? What, shoulder of lamb, Mary Berry recipe apricot stuffing? Call it a Mini Cooper automatic and one for yourself.

Stress? Generalised anxiety? Give me a break. But more than 800 punters drove away, shaking like a spaniel passing razor blades.

Obesity? Dyslexia? Why should you get a free car because you’re hideously fat and can’t stop stuffing your face with Gregg’s steak bakes or whatever it is the yuppies lap up at Gail’s? And if you can’t read the road signs, you shouldn’t be behind the wheel in the first place.

Then there’s ‘tennis elbow’. I give tennis the elbow every Wimbledon. I suppose a Jag’s out of the question?

Bedwetting? Let’s not even go there.

My absolute favourite is ‘writer’s cramp’. Does that include ‘writer’s block’, too? If it does, by about midday every Monday and Thursday, there’d be a car transporter from Lexus Hatfield backing down my driveway. Take your pick, Rich, and one for the missus.

I think that about covers the waterfront. But before you accuse me of flippancy and cynicism (guilty, m’lud), don’t forget that this is our money.

This is what the shenanigans in the Bubble were really about this week. Not the (horrible) humiliation of Rachel Reeves and (not so horrible and thoroughly deserved) humiliation of Surkeir (who seemed robotically immune to it all), or the backbench revolts, or whatever other fatuous headlines the rolling news channels chose to flag under ‘breaking news’.

This is State of the Nation stuff, the reason we are all going to Hell in a handcart. This matters.

I’m sure you don’t need reminding that welfare plus debt interest now costs us more than defence, education, police, and whatever else I’ve forgotten, put together. Call it £100 billion for cash.

Yet gormless Labour backbenchers still think it’s not enough. There was one dopey Northern MP with Nick Ferrari on LBC this week wailing that the imaginary ‘cuts’ weren’t only going to hit the ‘disabled’ but also those who were about to ‘become disabled’.

Run that by me again. I know the NHS has a seven million-long waiting list for assorted operations and treatments, but I had no idea we had a waiting list for people who are planning to ‘become disabled’ in the not-too-distant.

Can you now put your name down to become disabled?

‘Hello, is that the NHS? I’m feeling a bit fed up and I’d like to register as disabled from November, if that’s OK. And could you put me down for one of those hybrid Toyota RAV4 Wossnames on Motability. Luvvly jubbly.’

For the record, I haven’t got a new A8 long wheelbase on the taxpayer. But running down the government ‘disability’ checklist, I’d certainly be entitled to one. Or two, or even three. By the end of the week, my driveway could look like Arthur Daley’s forecourt – no questions asked.

I’m not making this up. A lovely, recently retired woman who used to work in social care rang Ferrari to explain that when she ran a home for people with disabilities they had a minibus, which would take her – for want of a better word – patients on daily trips to the shops, the movies, the park and so on.

Last time she drove by, the Peter Kay minibus was gone and there were a dozen new Motability cars parked up outside the home. None of the recipients can drive so they had to wait for a qualified driver to take them out once a week. This is utter madness, but it is the reality of the Motability/modern welfare/money no object ‘welfare’ system which Labour is determined to defend. Who the hell benefits from this insanity?

Plus, there’s nothing new about this. Twenty-five years ago, during a previous economic downturn, my car dealer mate Pat told me that the only thing keeping the local BMW dealership above water was the number of 1-series being knocked out on Motability.

During the Falklands War, the satirical magazine Private Eye ran a headline taking the proverbial out of tabloid jingoism. It read:

‘Kill an Argie and Win A Metro’.

These days, it would be more a more accurate reflection of modern Britain if it read:

‘Wet Your Bed, Win an Audi’.