Starmer must meet Tory conditions if he wants us to back Welfare Bill
The Tory leader said the Bill does not cut down welfare spending enough or go far enough to get people back to work and called for the Prime Minister to promise no new taxes would be announced in the autumn.
Ministers have said the reforms could save up to £5 billion a year.
Sir Keir has said he will 'press on' with the legislation despite the prospect of a major revolt when the welfare Bill comes before the Commons in a vote set for July 1.
More than 100 backbenchers – enough to threaten the Prime Minister's majority – have signed an amendment designed to halt the changes.
The Tory leader said Labour's MPs are in 'open rebellion' and set out conditions for her party's MPs to back the bill.
'The Government is in a mess, their MPs are in open rebellion. If Keir Starmer wants our support, he needs to meet three conditions that align with our core Conservative principles,' she said.
'The first condition is that the welfare budget is too high, it needs to come down. This Bill does not do that.
'The second condition is that we need to get people back into work. Unemployment is rising, jobs are disappearing, and even the Government's own impact assessments say that the package in this Bill will not get people back to work.
'The third is that we want to see no new tax rises in the autumn. We can't have new tax rises to pay for the increases in welfare and other Government spending.
'We are acting in the national interest to make the changes the country needs.
'And if Keir Starmer wants us to help him get this Bill through, then he must commit to these three conditions at the dispatch box.'
A Labour spokesperson said that they are 'prepared to take on the challenges holding the UK back'.
'We're fixing the abysmal mess the Tories left behind, and MPs can either vote to keep a broken failed welfare system that writes people off, or they can vote to start fixing it,' the spokesperson said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
22 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Top civil servant told to ‘get on it' after ruling on gender
Mr Griffin insisted the Scottish Government was 'taking action where we think that is appropriate and possible', pending a further update from regulators at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). But with two women's rights groups – For Women Scotland and Sex Matters – now threatening further legal action against the Scottish Government, Ms Thomson told the top civil servant he should 'get on it'. She challenged the Permanent Secretary on the issue in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling back in April that the words 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex. That judgment came about after a challenge to the Scottish Government by For Women Scotland – with ministers, including First Minister John Swinney, making clear that while they accept that, they are waiting for further guidance from the EHRC before acting. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body made changes to its policy on the use of toilet facilities in the Holyrood building in May (Image: Jane Barlow/PA) Ms Thomson however pointed out that at Holyrood the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has ruled that the use of toilet facilities designated as either male or female will be based on biological sex – preventing trans people from using the toilet of their preferred gender. Mr Griffin insisted there is a 'range of action we have been taking already', adding that Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville had tasked him with leading a short life working group 'to take stock of the actions we need to take'. Speaking as he gave evidence to MSPs on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, Mr Griffin said: 'These are the actions we are taking while we wait for the end of the EHRC process to review their statutory guidance. 'Once that is finalised we will then be able to take a further series of actions.' He added: 'We are taking action where we think that is appropriate and possible, pending the finalisation of the EHRC guidance.' READ MORE: When Ms Thomson then demanded to know what action had been taken 'beyond talking about taking action', Mr Griffin told her: 'Specific actions, I can't give you that right now.' But he insisted the work being done was looking to 'prepare the ground' so that the government is ready to implement changes once the EHRC guidance is finalised. The Permanent Secretary said: 'We in the Scottish Government are in a very similar position to the UK Government and the Welsh Government in our understanding of our responsibility being we need to wait for the guidance for the implementation of some actions.' Michelle Thomson insisted Scotland's most senior civil servant needs to 'get on it' and act after a landmark Supreme Court ruling (Image: Andrew Milligan/PA) But with two potential further legal challenges that Ms Thomson said could potentially result in a 'significant loss of public money', the SNP MSP told him she was 'staggered why you are not acting now'. Mr Griffin said the advice he was given 'remains nevertheless that we should wait for the statutory regulator to finalise their guidance'. He added: 'I am assured that the advice that I've got is the correct advice. 'We find ourselves in a very similar position to our colleagues at Westminster and in Cardiff.' But Ms Thomson told him: 'I think my firm advice to you would be to look afresh at that. It is no justification under law, frankly, to say: 'Ah well, that's what everybody else was doing.' 'The Supreme Court judgment was compellingly clear, there is a threat of two further legal actions. My firm advice to you, Permanent Secretary, would be to get on it, because I think you are ultimately the accountable officer responsible for ensuring the Scottish Government upholds the law. 'And regardless of your view in this matter, I personally think it is a very poor look that we're 10 weeks later and we haven't done anything about it.'
Spectator
31 minutes ago
- Spectator
Starmer's directionless national security strategy fools no one
Sometimes it feels as if the government's approach to defence and security could be summed up by the venerable punchline of the Irish farmer, 'I wouldn't have started from here'. Despite having had more than four years as Leader of the Opposition to prepare, Sir Keir Starmer never quite seems able to seize the initiative as Prime Minister, often being left puce and blinking. Yesterday saw the publication of the UK's national security strategy (NSS) 2025, Security for the British people in a dangerous world. It had been announced in February and promised before this week's Nato summit (in fact, it was released on the summit's first day). The Prime Minister argued it would pull together a number of extant reviews: the Strategic Defence Review, the AUKUS review, the Defence Industrial Strategy, the China audit, the FCDO's three internal reviews and the strategy for countering state threats, among others. The danger is that if everything is 'national security', then nothing is It was obvious at the time that this sequencing was nonsensical. The UK's first national security strategy, Security in an interdependent world, was a product of Gordon Brown's government, issued in 2008, and it was genuinely innovative. It was meant to conceptualise 'national security' in a new and broad way, taking in not just traditional elements like military operations, diplomacy, intelligence and counter-terrorism, but 'threats to individual citizens and to our way of life, as well as to the integrity and interests of the state'. Brown billed it as 'a single, overarching strategy bringing together the objectives and plans of all departments, agencies and forces involved in protecting our national security' From it flowed a number of discrete tasks and policies. The approach was not complicated: determine the big picture, then decide how to support it in practical terms. Starmer's national security strategy has done almost the opposite (though that ascribes to it too much coherence). We have seen the Strategic Defence Review setting out the future shape and tasks of the armed forces, three internal FCDO reviews have reported to the Foreign Secretary (but not released) and as much of the China audit as we will see is in the National Security Strategy. Meanwhile the Defence Industrial Strategy is a work in progress, and the AUKUS review risks being made irrelevant by the Trump administration's own re-examination. So it is neither top-down, nor bottom-up, but rather lacking any direction at all. I wouldn't have started from here. One important element of the NSS is an announcement on expenditure. The Nato summit is expected to agree a spending target of 5 per cent of GDP, made up of 3.5 per cent on core defence capabilities and 1.5 per cent on 'resilience and security'. The NSS contains an 'historic commitment to spend 5 per cent of GDP on national security', which is encouraging, but the detail is teeming with devils. First, the date by which the UK is expected to meet this level of spending is 2035. That is at least two general elections away; Vladimir Putin will turn 83 and Donald Trump will be 89, if either is spared. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy's Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines will be coming out of service. It is a long time away, and it remains a target without any practical steps to reach it. The NSS also widens the scope of 'national security' further than ever before. Including energy policy may seem defensible, but attaching the label to 'green growth', 'inequality' or 'stripping out red tape' starts to stretch credibility. The interdepartmental nature of the 'national security' umbrella is vital – but the danger is that if everything is 'national security', then nothing is. This matters because if the government simply moves spending from one column on its mother of all spreadsheets to another, it does not acquire a new capability. Equally, there is no deterrent effect on Russia or China, or 'Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm' – as Elizabeth I once so neatly put it. If the Prime Minister designates Border Security Command as a 'national security' asset, that is £150 million he had already earmarked, not new investment. The 2008 national security strategy was a serious and systematic attempt, supervised and delivered by Robert Hannigan and Patrick Turner, to design an overarching framework for the defence of the UK and its interests, then develop policies to support that framework. Its 2025 successor does not –by its nature and timing cannot – achieve that same goal. The national security strategy is not all bad; it comes in large part from the pen of the formidable Professor John Bew, who spent five years in Downing Street as foreign policy adviser to four successive prime ministers. But he has been asked to change the tyres on a moving car, creating a strategy around half a dozen other reviews in various stages of progress. There must be very serious concerns now that it is little more than a centripetal instrument for pulling in enough government expenditure nominally to meet our Nato obligations. Our allies are unlikely to be fooled, and our enemies will certainly not be.
New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
Thomas Skinner's full English
Illustration by André Carrilho 'I don't plan – I just do everything on impulse.' So Thomas Skinner told the producers of The Apprentice before his television debut in 2019. And as we chatted before he spoke at the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation's Now and England conference, I began to believe him. He was grinning at me in his bulky suit, his face ablaze with a suntan like a bank holiday weekend. I asked him what he knew about his co-panellists, the High Tory MP Danny Kruger, the Brexiteer historian Robert Tombs and the ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, latterly famous for calling for mass deportations. Skinner said he didn't know much about them. I asked him who had invited him to speak. 'James,' he replied, meaning James Orr, the Cambridge theology professor and close friend of JD Vance. But he said that he didn't really know James either. He'd simply accepted an invitation to talk about 'how much I love England'. Skinner's very presence here is a sign of the new strategies and gambits of the political right. His name will puzzle many otherwise switched-on, urbane readers. He started out as a pillow and mattress salesman, and then after his firing from The Apprentice – one of those decent, head-held-high firings, without the usual pleading and back-stabbing – Skinner remade himself a star of reality TV. He appeared on Celebrity MasterChef and 8 Out of 10 Cats. And, to far greater recognition, in mid 2022 he started to post videos of himself eating elaborately unhealthy meals on (then) Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. These meals are generally drawn from what I think of as the Great British, mid-week, can't-be-arsed menu: cottage pie, jacket potatoes and those domesticated exoticisms, curry, chilli con carne, Chinese. And like a Dickens character reminding you who they are after a multi-chapter absence, Skinner narrates these meals in a language of cheery catchphrases: 'Don't go home until you're proud'; 'Tough times don't last, but tough people do'; and, simply, 'Bosh!'. These videos, along with rolling footage of the Romford good life (golf, family BBQs, early-morning gym), have won Skinner an audience of 683,000 on Instagram alone. In recent months, however, something has shifted in his online persona. Skinner had always presented himself as a graduated member of the petite bourgeoisie (Ford Transit for work, red Bentley for play). But suddenly he started to post about his mates not wanting to go to church with him, about how families need more support with childcare costs, and about how 'London has fallen' with people 'too frightened to walk down their own street'. 'We need leadership that understands the streets, the markets, the working class', he wrote. 'People like me.' Dominic Cummings immediately offered his services for a London mayoral campaign. The reactionary right sniffed out a new champion in their battle against the libs. They believe Ray Parlour can be remade into their very own Hereward the Wake. And so, here is Skinner, taking his seat next to Rupert Lowe, in an Edwardian auditorium in Westminster. Around us were the Tory boys of stereotype: legions of gelled Malfoys, spotted with misshapen Crabbes and Goyles. First, though, both he and we had to endure the other speakers. Kruger kicked off. As he started speaking, Skinner spun his seat side-on and leant back a deckchair 45 degrees. Kruger talked about how England was the 'first nation', about Wycliffe, Bede and Alfred. And though we had been 'interpenetrated by foreigners', he exalted the great continuities in English history and that 'anyone can become English', a remark the man in front of me seemed to find oddly exercising. Behind me, a woman was resting her eyes. Skinner slouched and itched, swigging water directly from a large glass bottle (forgoing the tumbler provided). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Next up was Tombs, who was straightforwardly dull. He talked about how we should teach the history of the country we share, emphasising what we have in common. He recommended a long march through the woke institutions, making funding of public projects more accountable and regularising the national history taught in schools. By this time, Skinner was nearly horizontal, and gurning madly on a stick of chewing gum. Last of the old guard was Lowe. The most exciting part of his speech came at the start: his reading glasses hung around his neck in two halves, and when he started speaking he snapped them together at the nose with delicious emphasis. Lowe is captivating, like a public schoolmaster at chapel; indeed, he reads his own words as if they actually come from the Bible. He gave his usual scripture about the Blairite coup and government by lawyers. Skinner was completely lost to his phone, typing away, the stage lights glinting off his golden watch. But when his turn came around, he bounded to the podium. His speech was titled 'The England I Love'. England is 'the absolute guv'nor', he said, home of the rule of law, the Industrial Revolution and the World Wide Web. It is built on family, graft and community: 'The single mum up at 5am, getting her kids ready, before a long day of work, but who still finds the strength to smile.' But these people have been failed, 'left behind in [their] own country', with 'kids being taught to be ashamed of their own flag'. He advocated once again for better childcare and support for young parents, as well as more forceful police (because, 'let's be honest, they're pussies at the minute'). It was simple, stirring, populist stuff. He was the only speaker to be interrupted by applause. Throughout, Kruger was looking at Skinner warily, as though a drunk had wandered into his train carriage. Tombs was studying him intently, like the president of the Royal Society confronted with a baffling new specimen. Lowe just grinned maniacally. When Skinner had finished, he offered him an awkward, lingering but reciprocated high-five. I couldn't help but wonder what united Skinner with these three: a post-liberal party intellectual, a grandee academic and a seigneurial landowner. As the panel took questions, Lowe went further, leaning into his 'family business' (and, he neglected to say, multimillionaire) background, and championing people 'like Tom and his family'. And he was rewarded with an 'I agree with what Rupert just said', before the final 'I would literally say what Rupert just said but I'm getting hot and ready for a pint'. Skinner ultimately scrambled off the stage during the Q&A – he said he had to take a call – and it was a good time to leave. First, there was a question from Carl Benjamin, a disgraced alt-right YouTuber. And then, as Tombs was saying something anodyne about how anyone could be English, he was interrupted by a nativist heckler. 'Ridiculous!' someone said. 'You inherit Englishness, it's in your ancestry.' Tombs argued him down, but the mood had soured. Perhaps he had just meant inheritance in the sense that these things must be actively passed down. Perhaps not. In his present incarnation, Skinner is far too goofy for such talk. But, an hour after the social media star sprinted off the stage, Robert Jenrick posted a video with him (two hours from then, I see from X, Skinner was having spag bol at home). More than any other politician, Jenrick is desperate to join Skinner in the realm of the algorithmic celebrity. And here was their crossover, a discussion of tool theft and its effect on tradesmen. In his speech, Skinner confirmed he's 'thinking about giving it a go in politics'. In so many ways, he's already there. [See also: Dominic Cummings: oracle of the new British berserk] Related
