Keir Starmer is in the Netherlands to attend the Nato summit – but that is not the subject which is gripping everyone back home. This afternoon, the Prime Minister held a press conference to confirm that the UK will shortly be expanding its nuclear deterrent by buying a squadron of American-made fighter jets. It is the most significant change in Britain’s nuclear posture since the end of the Cold War. Yet the attendant hacks chose to focus on a rather different conflict.
The welfare bill dominated today’s PMQs in Starmer’s absence and is clearly the obsession of MPs here in Westminster. With 120 Labour rebels now publicly confirmed, would the PM now be pulling the bill? Absolutely not, suggested Starmer. ‘We were elected in to change the system that is broken, and that is what we’ll do, and that’s why we’ll press ahead with the reforms,’ he said. Unlike his No. 10 spokesman, he declined to use the word ‘moral’ to describe his changes. No change here, guv.
Instead Starmer preferred to call welfare reform a ‘progressive’ and ‘Labour’ argument. His most striking line was when he was asked about why he had failed to read the mood of his own MPs. The PM insisted that the party is ‘pretty united’ and ‘absolutely on the [same] page’ on the need for reform… ‘Is it tough going? Are there plenty of people and noises off? Yes, of course, there always are, there always have been, there always will be. But the important thing is to focus on the change that we want to bring about’.
‘Noises off’ is not exactly how many would categorise a full-scale revolt which boasts multiple select committee chairs and spans the breadth of the parliamentary party. Indeed, even Starmer’s claim that the party is on the same ‘page’ on the basic need for reform does not stack up. To take just one example, Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the Commons panel on work and pensions, declared yesterday that she did not agree with any of Starmer’s proposed cuts to the benefits bill.
Starmer’s defiant stance can either be read as a confident assertion of strength – or a stubborn refusal to admit his error. Judging by the mood among his MPs, the latter conclusion seems more likely. As one 2024 loyalist, who has not signed the rebels’ letter, says: ‘Government is going to have to cave.’ The fact that first Rayner at PMQs and then Starmer at his press conference committed themselves to Tuesday’s vote means any potential U-turn will now be all the more embarrassing.
Exacerbating the Labour tensions is the fall-out from last week’s vote on assisted dying, with Kim Leadbeater’s bill narrowly passing its third reading in the Commons by 23 votes. As Henry Zeffman of the BBC notes, some of the rebel ringleaders on welfare were very active on both sides of that debate. Voting ‘no’ on assisted dying appears to be a very good predictor of the rebels, with a Labour ‘nay’ voter being almost twice as likely to have signed as a Labour ‘aye’.
That suggests that this rebellion would not have happened without assisted dying laying the ground for it. Starmer’s tacit support for Leadbeater’s bill has driven a wedge in his party and given some MPs a taste for organising and rebellion. In time, it could prove to be one of his great missteps: a needless rod that he made for his own back which shapes the course of the rest of this parliament.
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