Starmer suspends seven rebel MPs including McDonnell over two-child benefit cap vote
Starmer suspends seven rebel MPs including McDonnell over two-child benefit cap vote
Show of strength by new Labour prime minister after work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said the government had to do ‘the sums’ before it could commit to abolishing the limit
They haven't been suspended for voting for the policy, because it wasn't a vote on the policy.
They've been suspended because they voted for an opposition party's amendment to the King's Speech. If you're in the governing party but are voting against your own party's agenda, what else do they expect to happen?
I think this is key - it's early days and the new government are still figuring out the size of the mess they've been left with. What they've announced so far are the big policies that they've done their sums on in advance. Scrapping the cap will require them to find a bullion quid from somewhere and that might take time. I have to assume the SNP amendment was at least partially them messing with Labour as they knew it wouldn't get through.
Very true. Also worth noting that they all won election on the policy of not repealing the limit. It's not like this came out of left field!
Liz Kendall said the government had to do ‘the sums’ before it could commit to abolishing the limit
Watch them do the sums and declare that we can't afford it. And thus it will become the first of many Tory fiscal policies that a Labour government decides to cling onto rather than throw it in the rubbish heap where it belongs.
I'll eat my words if I'm wrong.
It's telling how they never have to "do the sums" for bombs or missiles.
They seemed to be softening somewhat on the cap, even Starmer himself had been making more open comments on it. I’ve seen some suggestions this was laying the groundwork for a “rabbit out of the hat” at the budget, either raising or removing the cap.
However, if the Starmer camp feels they still need to project strength and stability, the shift on the cap may now be jeopardised. They could now double back down on keeping it to not be seen as caving in to rebels or flip-flopping.
Time will tell. I hope I’m wrong but we still haven’t seen what the true colours of Starmer’s Labour will pan out to be.
Hopefully they stick to actually doing things they've planned for, rather than madcap populist impulse decisions.
First of all: fuck the king.
Second: if it wasn’t this, Starmer would have found something else to suspend the best (least shit) Labour MPs.
The policy is what exactly? Totally confused by the story within a story about Labour rebellions and former Home Secretaries.
There was an SNP amendment to the King's Speech to commit the government to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Seven Labour MPs rebeled and backed the motion and have now been suspended.
The policy proposed to be removed is a cap on welfare for more than two children leaving a family with three children roughly £3,455 worse off, and the average family affected by the policy £4,300 worse off.
The budget impact is estimated to be about £3.4 billion a year to bring 500,000 children above the poverty line - or about 0.2 percent of government spending.
Rebels should have pushed for the policy change internally instead of colluding with an opposition party. Also the suspension is only 6 months so they'll be back soon enough.
Labour does have a process for policies. It is called the National Policy Forum. He ignores it. So your suggestion that you can push internally is false. Keir doesn't tolerate dissent because he's an autocrat.
Labour used to get most funding from unions, it's now less than 30%, so wealthy business folk got control of that.
It's a shame that Keir's labour doesn't have policies that aren't cruel on people.
can we get back the tories already? they were shit but at least we expected them to be shit
What kind of shit world view is that
The world view of a hardcore trans rights activist. The kind of person for whom society will never be progressive enough, no matter how far it progresses.
Any government of any party would consider it to be a major breakdown in party discipline for one or more of its MPs to vote against its own Kings Speech.
That's why they've been suspended. If this amendment had been tagged on to a piece of legislation then this would have just been a regular rebellion, of the sort that happens all the time in Parliament. Rebelling on your own party's Kings Speech is an altogether different matter.
Please don't be like that.