The idea that large numbers of claimants are lazy or don't want to work has never been true anyway. There are numerous reasons for long term unemployment and none of them include laziness. It's much more to do with the damage that society inflicts on a lot of people and the precarity of poverty.
There are lots of people with substance misuse problems, often rooted in abuse (the venn diagram of addiction and childhood abuse is almost a perfect circle). There are kids, usually in areas of high unemployment, who have become alienated and disengaged. There are traumatised people in refuges and hostels, care leavers who have had awful childhood experiences, people who are homeless, people with criminal records that mean they are unlikely to be offered a job (sometimes understandably) and those with either diagnosed or undiagnosed physical or mental health conditions that don't meet the threshold for sickness/disability benefits. There are people who are just a bit eccentric, who might not have great social skills, or other issues, who genuinely find getting and keeping a job very difficult. To tie things back in, many of those from these groups are likely to have been drawn into the recent riots.
There is virtually no structural support and no real will to tackle the conditions that create people in these circumstances. Finding stable housing and work that pays a liveable income is hard if you come from nothing or have lots of other shit going on in your life. The idea that every human, no matter what their background and who they are, can be turned into a competitive and diciplined worker just by applying the right pressure is a neoliberal fantasy - as is the idea that the market will automatically create jobs tailored to those who are disabled, sick, carers or whatever.
Politicians and those in the media who dismiss these people as scroungers or workshy have no concept of what their lives are like. They imagine if they found themselves in that situation they would just stop drinking, smarten themselves up, go on a course, or get a job and work their way up to prosperity. They are baffled that these people don't do the same. They have no concept of the psychological damage poverty causes, or the daily relentless stress some people are under, or the very real barriers that are often placed in people's way if they try to improve their lives.
That's why the only answer they can come up with is more pressure, more benefit sanctions, more prosecutions, more cuts, anything to make their lives worse in the hope that this will push people to stop shirking and go out and thrive like a proper neoliberal subject. In reality they are demolishing people and we have just seen an example of the social costs of that for everybody.
