Why the new political right is bad news for autism

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I’m writing this in Boston, Lincolnshire – the Eastern English town that has long been a byword for immigration from Eastern Europe, Brexit, and the politics embodied by Nigel Farage and his new Reform UK party. There are elections here today (Thursday), for both a directly-elected Lincolnshire Mayor and local councillors - and Reform UK are being tipped as the possible winners. If that happens, they will go from being a force that makes endless mischief to actually running somewhere, and that change may also materialise in other places: see, for example, the Yorkshire city of Doncaster, where I made the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast on Thursday.

So, this is a good moment to try and articulate a deep fear of Reform UK-type politics, which is surely felt by plenty of people whose lives are (partly) defined by autism and neurodivergence.

Only last week, Farage jumped into the currently inescapable conversation about “overdiagnosis”, with his characteristic mixture of certainty and complete ignorance. He made the grimly familiar mistake – which was presumably not a mistake at all – of conflating issues to do with mental illness and those centred on Special Educational Needs, and claimed that questionable diagnoses were “creating a class of victims”. And then came the clincher: “So many of these diagnoses, for SEND before 18, for disability register [sic] after 18 – so many of these have been conducted on Zoom, with the family GP. I think that is a massive mistake.” Cue exactly what he wanted: a great explosion of outrage, and yet more headlines.

I don't dispute that Labour's behaviour towards the disabled,vulnerable, trans etc stinks to high heaven. I cancelled my party membership because of the planned cuts. It is very much a right left issue if you factor in that Starmer has shifted Labour into a centre right position.