There’s so much to say about the utterly grim debate on disability benefits, and not enough spoons to say it with. Ironically, this is partly because being constantly assailed by ableist bullshit every time I look at the news has been sapping my energy and making me sicker.

Luckily, most of it is already being said by other people. Particular thanks go to Frances Ryan for pointing out the elephant in the room that is long covid. For many sufferers, the steadfast refusal of politicians to acknowledge this as a factor in the rising benefits bill has felt like an exercise in mass gaslighting.

But there’s one small detail that’s lodged itself in my brain and just won’t go away – and it’s this. Last week, an unnamed Labour MP who was choosing to remain loyal to the government and its plans was quoted as saying, “Ultimately, I’m confident that people with extreme health cases won’t be left without a safety net. It’s just not going to happen.”

But, I wanted to shake this person by the shoulders and cry, it is already happening! As you would know if you had listened to anything the disabled community has been saying for the last ten years. As you would know if you had read any of the numerous articles and reports detailing deaths and suicides caused by an inhumane system. This information is not hidden or hard to find. It’s there for all to see.

I wonder where it comes from, this misplaced faith in the system? This belief that things could not possibly be broken or callous or cruel, because the good chaps in charge simply would not allow that to happen? This wilful blindness to all evidence to the contrary?

Perhaps there is a clue in Starmer’s repeated insistence that there is a “moral case” for punishing disabled people. As nonsensical as it is, I suspect that he genuinely believes this – or at least, that a part of him is choosing to believe it, even if another part must know that it is completely absurd.

At this point, I think it’s abundantly clear that Keir Starmer is a weak man. He is too weak to stand up to those in his own party who have sought to manipulate him. He is too weak to stand up to a failed orthodoxy. He is too weak to grasp the deep change that is needed in this country, too weak to face down the powerful interests that must be confronted, and too weak to face up to the reality of the choices he is making instead.

So he chooses self delusion.

I don’t think he would be able to operate otherwise, since he also appears genuinely attached to his idea of himself as a morally upstanding person. In this, I suspect he differs from someone like Wes Streeting, who has been institutionalised by machine politics for so long that he can no longer see anything except power games. (When I was at university, Streeting was President of the Students Union, and it was clear even then that he saw it as a springboard to a political career.)

All this is reminding me, too, of the time I found out that Suella Braverman – who, in Grace Petrie’s words, “actually identifies as a cartoon villain” – also identifies as a Buddhist. How does she square her belief that she is practising the dharma, I wondered, with the utter disregard she displayed in government for the lives of refugees and immigrants? I would genuinely like to know.

I ask these questions in all sincerity, because I think they may be among the most important ones we face. It’s increasingly clear to me that the existential threat to our world comes not just from fascists like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, who have open contempt for the lives of people they consider to be lesser than themselves, and open disregard for any suffering they might cause them. It also comes from those who believe themselves to be good people, but who are doing harmful things and choosing not to see it.

Human beings – and I absolutely include myself in this – have an immense capacity for self delusion. Most of us are attached to the idea of ourselves as good people. Most of us do things that cause harm to other living beings, and most of us lie to ourselves about it.

But not all of us have the power to impose our lies on others. At the moment, the stories that those in power are telling themselves to justify their behaviour are becoming political narratives that scapegoat and stigmatise the people they’re attacking. Hence the gaslighting.

Disabled people are not only having their benefits taken away. We’re having our reality called into question, having it substituted in the political arena for an imagined reality that is more convenient to the consciences of those in charge. And that is as deep a blow as anything else.

Ministers are desperate to deny the fact that millions of people in this country are in such physical or mental distress that they can no longer “work” in the way that the economic system requires them to. (Incidentally, this does not mean that they cannot contribute to society, because those two things are not the same.)

So they have concocted an alternative reality, one where this inconvenient fact is simply a quirk of the system – the result of perverse incentives or “over diagnosis” – that can be corrected by putting more pressure on disabled people to get back into work.

Those of us with long covid will recognise this mindset instantly. We have all been through phases where we wanted to wish our illness away, to believe that we could still do all the things that we used to build our identity around, if only we tried a little bit harder.

It does not work. In fact – as these reforms undoubtedly will – it usually makes things worse.

If we are going to save our world from the death spiral it appears to be in, we have to become brave enough and honest enough to face up to the harm we are doing to ourselves, to other people and to the planet. We have to become brave enough to face up to the gravity of the crisis we are in.

Long covid sufferers know that healing is only possible once we accept the reality of our situation, however unwelcome and challenging it may be. It is one of the many things we could teach this government, if only they were prepared to listen.