Why Starmer's punishment beating won't bring Labour MPs to heel

Telegraph

11 hours ago

Join the dots and it is not hard to work out what is going on with the punishment announced on Wednesday for seven Labour MPs who voted against the welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer's personal authority took a major hit a fortnight ago when 127 Labour MPs – one in four – put their names to an amendment blocking his welfare cuts package.
A year into power, a Prime Minister who won a House of Commons majority of a similar scale to Sir Tony Blair's was struggling to pass a proposed law he dubbed morally right and fiscally essential.
The episode revealed deep failings in Downing Street's political intelligence operation, hubris among the Starmer inner circle and the dangers of rushing through sensitive reforms to save money.
Most of it all lit up, in bright technicolour, a newfound willingness of an otherwise pliant Parliamentary Labour Party to speak back to the boss.
Something, as they say, had to be done.
The 'suspended four'
And so we have the first step: four Labour MPs stripped of the whip – meaning they are now forced to sit as independents until further notice – and another three losing trade envoy appointments.
Why not action against all 127 Labour MPs who put their name to the rebel amendment? Or all 49 ones who, even after the welfare bill was gutted of almost all savings, still voted against it?
The explanation is in the numbers. The former would have wiped out the Government's majority, the latter taken a huge chunk from it. Action on that scale was unthinkable.
So a more measured approach was needed, an attempt to show that defying the Prime Minister was not without consequence while also minimising the backlash.
And so the four persistent critics of the Government have been singled out and scalped. They had committed 'repeated breaches of party discipline', to use the formal explanation briefed out by the Labour Party.
This was true. Rachael Maskell has become one of the most vocal critics of Sir Keir on the Labour backbenches, penning articles about how to rebel and giving interviews about her newfound role as a thorn in the side of No 10.
Chris Hinchliff was dubbed 'Nimby-in-Chief' by colleagues, recently leading an amendment to the Government's planning bill – one of Sir Keir's flagship pieces of legislation – to avoid the watering down of environmental protections. He is now tipped to join the Greens.
Brian Leishman has hammered ministers over the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery. Neil Duncan-Jordan challenged many cuts, including pushing to postpone the Winter Fuel Payment reduction.
But the argument also gave No 10 cover for why many more rebels have not been reprimanded. Only those who crossed over some unspecified extra threshold got slapped down.
We have seen this play before. In fact, just a year ago, when seven Labour MPs were stripped of the whip after voting to end the two-child benefit cap, defying the Government whip.
It was a divide and conquer tactic. Four eventually returned to being Labour MPs, two remain on the naughty step as independents and the seventh – Zarah Sultana – has quit the party, vowing to start her own Left-wing movement.
The message being sent is not subtle. 'Shoot one to educate thousands', as a former member of Team Starmer put it on Wednesday. But will it really work?
PM under threat from Reform
The Starmer of July 2024 is not the Starmer of July 2025.
The former was at the height of his political power, having swept into office weeks earlier on a wave of anti-Tory sentiment, ending the party's 14 years all at sea in opposition.
Now, Downing Street is struggling to show it has a plan for stopping Reform's poll-topping support surge which has got scores of Labour MPs in narrowly won seats jittery.
Indeed, the real bite of the welfare rebellion came not from it being the 'usual suspects' but that concerns about the cuts package were so widespread they could be found across Labour's many factions.
Will Dame Meg Hillier, the widely respected chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee who led the negotiating delegation to discuss the terms of the Government's climbdown, hesitate from rebelling again after this disciplinary action?
There is no evidence to suggest the answer is yes – especially given she has escaped any telling off herself.
Will Vicky Foxcroft, who was so opposed to the hastily put together welfare plan that she resigned as a Government whip, bite her lip in a repeat scenario because of this whips action on Wednesday? Unlikely.
Cabinet overhaul
Indeed, there was an immediate backlash from the Left – vows of 'solidarity with the suspended four' and howls of 'outrage' – that suggests in the short-term things will be more, not less, turbulent.
More changes to right what went wrong with the welfare package are coming. No 10 is seeking advice and mulling over a summer 'reset'.
An overhaul of Downing Street personnel, reforms to the machinery of Government and a ministerial reshuffle are all now widely expected ahead of the September party conference.
The breadth, speed and scale of a shake-up – and whose Government careers are left in the bin – is all to be determined.
But if the Prime Minister thinks a punishment beating of just seven of the 127 Labour MPs who defied him over welfare will bring this rebellious backbench to heel, he may be in for a nasty surprise.