Starmer moves to quell Labour mutiny ahead of key welfare policy vote

After a U-turn on disability benefit cuts, Starmer will spend Monday urging Labour MPs to support a revised plan ahead of a crucial vote that could test his authority within the party

By Alex Wickham

 

Keir Starmer is working to contain the rebellion in his Labour Party ahead of a vote Tuesday on his flagship welfare policy that’s provoked widespread criticism and called his leadership into doubt.

 

After being forced by Labour lawmakers into an embarrassing U-turn last week that saw him water down a plan to cut disability benefits, the premier will spend Monday trying to persuade skeptics in his party to back a revised package. That would exempt existing claimants from tougher rules at a cost of some £3 billion ($4.1 billion) to the Treasury.

 

While Starmer is expected to win the vote in the House of Commons, dozens of Members of Parliament on the left of the party, including several disabled MPs, are still considering voting against the government.  

 

In an effort to win them over, the premier on Monday announced details of a comprehensive review of Personal Independence Payment, the benefit at the heart of the controversy over which more than 120 Labour MPs had threatened to vote against Starmer, an outcome that would have plunged his premiership into doubt.

 

The vote comes after a weekend of media speculation about Starmer’s position and a series of interviews given by the premier in which he admitted to a raft of mistakes in his first year in office, with the anniversary falling this week. 

 

He’s conducted three major climb-downs recently: on welfare; a planned cut to pensioners’ cold-weather payments; and reversing his past opposition to holding an inquiry into child sexual abuse gangs. That prompted criticism of his judgment. Despite leading Labour to a landslide election victory last July, the party now trails Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK in opinion polls.

 

The Times newspaper reported that some members of Starmer’s cabinet were privately questioning whether the country needed a different prime minister. 

 

Some Labour MPs want him to sack Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and pivot the government to the left, Bloomberg reported Saturday. 

 

There may be no imminent danger to Starmer, though the threatened mutiny by Labour lawmakers over the welfare bill and the briefings by anonymous MPs to the media about his leadership style are all the more extraordinary given he presides over a huge working majority of 165 in the Commons and his position was seen as unassailable only a few weeks ago.

 

Starmer had promised that his election would bring an end to the political chaos and infighting that defined his Conservative predecessors’ 14 years in government, a pledge he is already struggling to deliver.

 

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Starmer suggested he’d been distracted by global affairs such as last week’s NATO summit and the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Iran, saying he would “carry the can” for his government’s domestic woes. 

 

In a separate interview with the Observer, the premier conceded he’d made errors including his gloomy rhetoric about the economy on taking office and his language when talking about immigration. In both interviews, the premier said he had been shaken by alleged firebomb attacks on properties linked to him earlier this year. 

 

Health Secretary Wes Streeting told broadcasters Sunday that the government was in a “better position” ahead of Tuesday’s vote than it had been before it made concessions to rebel MPs. But in a sign of the atmosphere, Streeting was forced to deny that he had ambitions to replace Starmer as premier, dismissing such questions as “mischief.”

 

According to John Curtice, politics professor at the University of Strathclyde, Starmer’s plummeting poll ratings are unprecedented for a British prime minister following an election victory. 

 

“It’s the worst start for any newly elected government, any newly elected prime minister, either Labour or Conservative,” Curtice told Times Radio.

 

The problems for Starmer and Reeves are compounded by their need to raise money elsewhere to balance the UK’s fragile public finances in a budget later this year.

 

It’s seen as highly likely that Reeves will have to hike taxes again, despite her insistence that she didn’t want to repeat last year’s tax-raising budget. Yet further increasing the tax burden risks running at odds with the government’s insistence that its defining mission is economic growth.

 

As part of a wider attempt to focus more on policy areas that are important to voters, the government is due to unveil a 10-year plan to reform the National Health Service. Artificial intelligence will be used to scan NHS systems to flag safety issues, the department of health and social care said Monday.