It’s not a confidence vote,’ Keir Starmer insisted plaintively yesterday, after it was put to him that his personal authority was on the line over the mounting rebellion against his disability benefit cuts.
‘It’s a vote about reforming our welfare system,’ he added. ‘It isn’t working. It doesn’t help people into work. Quite the contrary – it actually makes it harder for people to go into work.’
The Prime Minister is wrong. The uprising on the Labour backbenches is indeed a vote of confidence in his premiership. And he’s already lost it.
Yesterday, senior Cabinet ministers were despatched to put their revolting colleagues back in their box. According to the Financial Times, one minister claimed defeat would ’cause a fresh leadership contest’ and ‘could be the start of the end for Keir’.
The MP whose arm was being twisted with this dire prognostication merely shrugged. ‘I would be happy to see a leadership contest, I think perhaps it’s time for a change,’ they replied.
By the end of the day, the number of signatories to the ‘reasoned amendment’ that would effectively cripple the legislation had actually risen, from 108 to 123.
Let me be clear. In my view, the Labour MPs opposing this crude and cruel attack on the disabled are correct. The Welfare Bill needs to be slashed. But this is not the way to do it.
Under the Government’s plan, those suffering genuine disability, including conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s, will have the help they need to wash and prepare proper meals taken away from them.
And when contrasted with the gargantuan welfare budget which will top £100billion by 2029, the savings will be minuscule, no more than £4.5billion. The impact of which, according to the Government’s own assessment, will be to push a further 250,000 people into poverty – 50,000 of them children.
But let’s be equally clear. It would be naive to believe hundreds of those same Labour MPs who sat cheering Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement as she unveiled the cuts have suddenly developed a conscience. Some – such as my own MP Vicky Foxcroft, who resigned her junior Treasury role to vote against the Bill – did so primarily because of the inequities they see in the policy.
But for the majority, this is about sending a direct political message to Keir Starmer and his team: ‘We’ve had enough.’
Westminster politics is essentially contoured like an iceberg. For all the public machinations, most of what occurs is hidden from view. And for months, frustration among the Cabinet, ministers and backbench MPs at the perceived failures of Keir Starmer and his No 10 operation have been mounting.
Now they have finally broken the surface. Part of what Labour MPs are doing is simply reflecting the antipathy of their constituents. As one centrist Labour MP told me: ‘We’re just not going to humiliate ourselves by trying to defend this stuff any more. I got elected to stand up for those most in need for my community. This isn’t it.’
Labour’s poll rating does not lie. Go anywhere in the country – in particular any of the fabled working-class Red Wall constituencies – and the anger towards Keir Starmer is now matching anything directed at his Tory predecessors.
Right-leaning voters see his woke Metropolitanism as the epitome of everything they despise about The Establishment.
Left-leaning voters feel the bitter sting of betrayal as they perceive him to be pursuing policies little different from those of the government they just ejected from office. As one minister told me: ‘We just don’t have a coherent message about what this Government is trying to do.’
This confusion and exasperation is not just confined to the wider electorate. The most recent poll by independent political news website Labour List of Labour Party members’ approval rating of the Cabinet’s performance has Keir Starmer languishing in negative territory, with a rating of minus six.
Only fellow architects of the welfare debacle, Chancellor Rachel Reeves (minus 23) and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall (minus 28) have worse approval ratings.
Downing Street is reportedly ‘in a panic’ over the rebellion, and has seemingly been blindsided by the backlash. But it was coming as sure as night follows day. Because Labour MPs are not insulated from their constituents, and they’re certainly not insulated from their party activists.
The other problem with the welfare rebellion is that it directly plays into Labour MPs’ concerns over Keir Starmer’s political management. Or mismanagement.
This week they are being asked to mount the barricades to defend a strategy of shrinking the welfare bill, pushing back on Britain’s dependency culture and demonstrating the Government is prepared to take a tough stand on benefits.
But in a few weeks’ time Keir Starmer is reportedly going to announce a lifting of the two-child benefit cap, which will throw that strategy directly into reverse.
As one despondent backbencher told me: ‘I don’t mind defending tough decisions, so long as that’s part of a clear plan. But what is the plan? Are we getting on top of welfare, or aren’t we?’
Over the next few days, Downing Street will bear down hard on the rebels. Short of nailing them to crosses along the Appian Way like Spartacus’ revolting slaves, Starmer’s allies will deploy every trick in the book to force compliance.
Threats will be made, bribes proffered. Labour whips will point to Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and cite her political opportunism. Articles such as this will be brandished, with dire warnings about playing into the hands of Labour’s ‘enemies in the Press’.
So if I had to bet, I would guess, Keir Starmer will probably bring enough of his more careerist colleagues back into the fold to see him over the line. But it won’t really matter. Because the damage will already have been done.
This simply shouldn’t be happening. Less than a year into government, and an election victory that saw his party returned to office with a 170 majority, Keir Starmer should be master of all he surveys.
But the opposite is true. With this rebellion, Starmer’s MPs couldn’t have been clearer. They don’t believe they owe their leader anything.
They know the extent to which they are publicly humiliating him. They fully realise how comprehensively they are undermining his authority. They recognise the political implications of such a major rebellion so soon after their rout at the hands of Reform in the local elections. And they simply don’t care.
Because they have seen the mounting public hostility, and decided – probably correctly – their election victory was secured despite, not because of, Keir Starmer. They have witnessed first-hand the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of what passes for his political strategy. And concluded it is not a strategy that can hope to deliver electoral success in three or four years’ time.
So what we are currently witnessing is not merely a ‘rebellion’. It is Labour MPs delivering their verdict, after 12 months of government, on their leader’s suitability for office. And it could not be a more damning one.