'As a disabled person, I feel like we're going backwards’

Comedian Rosie Jones stars in a groundbreaking new sitcom, Pushers’. She tells Ellie Harrison how disability isn’t the real focus of the show, and why she’s so disappointed with Labour

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When Labour won the election with a landslide majority last summer, comedian Rosie Jones found herself surprisingly torn. For six years, under successive Tory governments, she'd been working on her new sitcom Pushers. The Channel 4 series, co-written by Jones and Peter Fellows, follows an ensemble of disabled characters who start selling drugs when their benefits are slashed.

While the left-wing comic was happy that Labour had finally come into power, she was also worried that her sitcom had just lost all relevance. She imagined that, by the time it came out this month, "we'd nearly be a year into a Labour government, and living in a utopia where every disabled person is treated fairly.

Unfortunately, here we are. And it hasn't panned out that way.

And I hate to say it, but I think we need a show like this more than ever." She is referring, of course, to Labour taking a £5bn sledgehammer to disability benefits in the biggest cuts on record. The move, announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves in her spring statement this March, came as a "huge shock" to Jones, who has cerebral palsy. "It's a sad state of affairs," the 34year-old says. "As a disabled person, I feel like we're going backwards, and it's scary. So although I want the overriding feeling when you watch this to be joy and having a good giggle, I also really hope it makes people think about the situation of the country right now, and how disabled people are getting treated so unfairly."

She shrugs. "It's shit." So not only is Pushers truly groundbreaking - the first British sitcom to have a cast in which the majority of actors are disabled - but it couldn't have arrived at a better time. It's also very funny. Jones stars as Emily, a charity worker who has a crush on her boss and, in an unlikely turn of events, becomes a criminal mastermind heading up a drug gang.