In the end, the great two-child benefit cap revolt proved to be somewhat underwhelming. The measure was always likely to fail given Labour’s mammoth majority of 172, with the government winning the vote by 363 votes to 103. Only seven of Keir Starmer’s MPs defied the entreaties of the Labour whips to vote in favour of the SNP’s amendment to the King’s Speech to scrap the policy. Their names are a handy ‘who’s who’ guide to the Labour left awkward squad: Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long Bailey, Zarah Sultana and ring-leader John McDonnell.
All seven have tonight had the whip suspended for six months, before it is then reviewed. Sultana subsequently tweeted:
I have been informed by the Chief Whip & the Labour party leadership that the whip has been withdrawn from me for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which would lift 330,000 children out of poverty. I will always stand up for the most vulnerable in our society.
The lack of rebels, combined with the fact that they can all be neatly pigeonholed as ‘Corbynite’, makes this a relatively easy decision for the Whips’ Office to take. It might perhaps have been harder if Rosie Duffield – Labour’s leading advocate of single-sex spaces – had been able to attend parliament tonight as she intended to vote against the measure. In the event, she has been paired owing to her illness with Covid. Her absence prevents a difficult choice for Chief Whip Alan Campbell, all too conscious of Duffield’s status among feminists wary of Starmer’s views on self-identification.
Tonight’s vote is the earliest backbench rebellion faced by a new government since 1945. It invites comparisons too with the 1997 vote on lone-parent benefit which was treated as a test of strength by Tony Blair’s incoming government. That ended up causing resentment on the backbenches among MPs, put off by the whips’ heavy handed tactics. But by opting for immediate, lengthy suspensions – the so-called ‘Admiral Byng treatment’ – party managers will hope that they have rid Labour of its most likely trouble-makers and sent out a warning pour encourager les autres.
The short-term challenge for the government may come if ministers subsequently choose to scrap the cap in the autumn: will these suspensions then be revoked? Longer term, the risk is encouraging a bunker attitude, in which the instinct is to suppress parliamentary criticism, rather than reflect on it. Given the Labour leadership’s mistakes over the Gaza vote last autumn, such an attitude could prove costly at some point in the years ahead.
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