Keir Starmer’s appearance before Labour MPs on Monday was a crowded affair. Such was the level of excitement that organisers set up an overspill room in parliament. A fortnight after a dire set of local election results, the Prime Minister promised to fight the next election ‘as Labour’. Yet his troops seem increasingly divided as to what that actually means.
More than two dozen MPs spoke at that meeting, criticising Starmer’s Gaza policy, migration speech and welfare cuts. It is those benefit changes that are causing the most immediate grief to the whips. Ministers want to restrict the eligibility requirements for disability payments, meaning only those with the most serious conditions can claim support. The hope is this will save £5 billion a year by 2030.
Some, like the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, argue that there is simply no alternative. Before Covid, there were 35,000 new claims for personal independence payments a month; there are now 70,000. ‘We are grasping the nettle of welfare reform,’ she said this week. ‘Not for the sake of it, but to save it.’ The welfare bill currently stands at £313 billion. It is forecast to reach £375 billion by the end of the decade.
Downing Street is trying to sell these reforms as a ‘Labour cause’: getting people back into work. Yet many within the party are sceptical. ‘If the Tories couldn’t do it, we will struggle,’ says one minister. A vote on the cuts is scheduled next month: it is widely expected to be the biggest Labour rebellion of the year.
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