Keir Starmer is in an historic mess. There's only one person to blame
KEIR Starmer's difficulties with his Orwellian 'welfare reforms' continue to mount. Those "reforms" of course consist of cruel cuts to the benefits received by some of the most vulnerable people in society – benefits which as a disabled person myself I know from personal experience are already exceptionally difficult to prove entitlement to. What's more, despite the impression to the contrary which Starmer's ghouls like to present, they are not out of work benefits.
Even if they were, Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall have never coherently explained how cutting the meagre support for disabled people will assist them into work, nor where exactly all the employers queueing up to offer work to disabled people are.
Now a large number of Labour MPs, backed by the SNP, the LibDems and the Greens, have signed a wrecking amendment to the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill which would kill it off even more effectively than the bill would kill off disabled people.
The bill is due to be debated and voted on in the Commons on Tuesday of next week. As things currently stand, the government does not have the numbers to force the bill through. The Tories, whose main objection is that it's not cruel and nasty enough, smell blood in the water, and have signalled that they will not vote with the UK Government.
Starmer has handled the prospect of a backbench rebellion in the same high-handed, arrogant and patrician manner in which he dealt with those Labour MPs who retained a sense of why they been elected and voted with the SNP in the early weeks of Starmer's government to axe the heinous two-child cap on benefits. Those MPs were suspended from the Parliamentary Labour party.
Starmer's first instinct when faced with this brewing rebellion was to threaten his allies, telling the potential rebels that they'd be excluded from government positions unless they got back into line. That backfired, and the number of Labour MPs who had signed the rebels' wrecking amendment continued to grow.
Reportedly, cabinet ministers including Reeves and Health Secretary Wes Streeting – presumably on a break from courting private healthcare companies for donations – phoned rebel MPs and told them that the vote would be one of confidence in Starmer's leadership.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting reportedly rang around trying to get MPs to support the cutsThis had the effect of increasing the number of Labour MPs who signed the amendment from 108 to 123. Starmer patronisingly dismissed the growing anger in his party as "noises off" and in consequence, by Thursday the number of Labour MPs who had signed the amendment had increased to 126.
It cannot be stressed enough just how remarkable this development is.
Starmer was elected with a landslide majority in the Commons less than a year ago, his government should still be in its political honeymoon period, impervious to challenge and able to govern supreme.
That the Prime Minister is currently staring at the prospect of defeat at the hands of its own MPs is unprecedented at this stage of the term in office of a British Government with a solid Commons majority. That this has come to pass is entirely due to Starmer, his lies and duplicity about change, and his staggering lack of political ability.
Labour's newly elected MPs are facing the realisation that they may be political one-hit wonders and as such they have nothing to lose by rebelling against the government.
Even twelve Labour MPs representing Scottish seats, normally the Labour party's most reliable lobby fodder, have signed the rebel amendment. That is one-third of Labour's Scottish contingent in the Commons. This is a direct challenge to Anas Sarwar, who has given his backing to the benefits cuts.
READ MORE: Can Keir Starmer find any policy that Anas Sarwar won't support?
At First Minister's Questions in Holyrood today, First Minister John Swinney attacked Sarwar for his supine obedience to Starmer, even though these cuts will, by the Labour government's own figures, throw 250,000 disabled people, including 50,000 children, into poverty.
Anti-poverty and disabled rights organisations calculate that the true number could be even higher, with in excess of 400,000 disabled people being driven into poverty as a direct consequence of Labour's cuts. Swinney remarked that Sarwar's willingness to blindly follow Starmer's line on cuts to benefits for disabled people is a sign that he "will not be standing up for Scotland any time soon".
That about sums it up.
This piece is an extract from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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