Welfare rebellion to test Starmer’s authority like never before

All of a sudden, this is a grave crisis for Sir Keir Starmer, perhaps the gravest of his year in Downing Street so far.

Politically, it looks very hard for the government to proceed with its flagship welfare policies.

Economically, it is very hard to see how the government cannot proceed.

Labour whips, we are told, have been jumping up and down for weeks trying to warn their colleagues in 10 and 11 Downing Street that the rebellion over the welfare reforms (or, depending on which wing of the Labour Party you are speaking to, welfare cuts) was shaping up to be much bigger than anticipated.

Still, the numbers involved in the amendment published overnight – 123 and rising – are breathtaking.

A year after the prime minister won a landslide of extraordinary magnitude, he cannot be sure of winning a crucial parliamentary vote. That is the kind of story familiar to collapsing governments, not new ones.

To call what the rebel MPs have signed up to an “amendment” does it a bit of a disservice. This is not some modest tweak.

A so-called “reasoned” amendment, it would stop the bill in its tracks, thwarting, for some time and perhaps for good, the welfare plans which the government, and especially Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, made a test of their own toughness just a few months ago.

The changes are intended to save the government £5bn a year by 2030, and more generally help them meet their economic rules.

As it stands, the government is meant to be bringing the bill – which make changes to Personal Independence Payments (Pips) and Universal Credit – to the Commons for a vote on Tuesday next week.

It is hard to see how that can now happen.

That’s not our view, that’s the view of almost everyone we have spoken to in the Labour Party this morning, on every wing of the party. One Labour MP said they felt “fury” on behalf of “those who want this government to succeed”.

A few hours later came an update. “I can’t see how the bill isn’t withdrawn now”.

This is simple arithmetical reality. The number of Labour MPs who have publicly put their name to this effort is enough to defeat the government with votes to spare, assuming they are joined by opposition parties.

The fact the amendment would defeat the government is likely to incline the opposition parties to do just that.

Potentially, the Conservatives will calculate that it would make Labour’s political pain all the more acute if they decided instead to vote with Starmer – meaning his flagship policy would pass only because of Conservative support.

This would just make the prime minister’s political predicament worse, and likely fuel a further rebellion from Labour MPs who came into politics in part because of a profound disagreement with the Conservatives on the nature of the welfare state.

Actually the first question facing the Conservatives is whether they would like to table an alternative “reasoned” amendment of their own.

If they do, that would make it much less likely that Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, decides to hold a vote on the Labour rebels’ amendment.

For that reason, the Conservatives may well hold their fire. Sir Lindsay, who has previously faced allegations of helping Sir Keir out in difficult moments, will also have to be sensitive to any perception of helping the prime minister out of a bind.

A leading signatory said that some people had signed the amendment in the expectation that it would not be called by the Speaker.

They wanted to highlight the strength of feeling – with the amendment being something of a very public petition, and in the hope that some in cabinet would use it to try to convince the prime minister and chancellor to re-think.

How did things get to this point? Part of it is fundamental.

Just as many of the New Labour landslide generation in 1997 had come into politics fuelled by anger at Thatcherism, many of this intake were brought into politics by protests about Conservative welfare policies.

One person involved in drawing up these reforms said the welfare state was to Labour MPs what Europe was to Conservative MPs.

The government’s argument is that it is exactly because of the importance of the welfare state that these measures are necessary — to ensure it is affordable and retains public support in the long-term.

After all, the cuts are only slowing the projected rate of increase in the welfare budget, rather than cutting it overall.

Some of what has brought this argument to this point is more mundane. Several Labour insiders said this morning that this amendment reflects poor handling of the parliamentary Labour Party, dating right back to when Starmer came into office almost exactly a year ago.

One signatory – a former frontbencher – told us: “Party management has been appalling right from the start. Holding meetings isn’t the same as listening – they have not listened to us. There has been a lot of frustration.”

A similar point is made by another rebel about Starmer himself. “The thing is, he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t spend anywhere near enough time over here in Parliament listening. Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] did so much more of it – and it matters.”

Among the leading signatories, one insider said, are “basically a load of people who found out they weren’t ministers on Twitter” last July.

That may be so, but it does not explain the willingness of so many members of the 2024 intake to defy the man who led that election campaign.

How firm is the signatories’ support for the amendment though? The fact that they have not just criticised the government, but actually signed an amendment on Parliament’s order paper, would suggest it is pretty firm.

One of them told us: “People have crossed a line – this isn’t some whips’ letter where the names are never leaked.”

One of those behind the amendment told us if it ultimately isn’t selected for a vote by the Speaker, it would be a bigger ask to expect people to vote against – and potentially vote down – their own government’s legislation, and it was difficult to know what the final figures would look like, but still there would be a substantial rebellion.

If the government pushes ahead with the vote next week, the only way to get the numbers down, they argued, would be to make concessions.

But a complicating factor is that not all potential rebels want the same changes.

So rather than more concessions being offered, so far whips – we are told – are giving a ‘nod and a wink’ to rebels that disabled people won’t lose out – that with no cuts to Pips scheduled until 2027, there is room to revisit the details further down the line without having to put off next week’s vote.

There are those in government who believe that if they face them down, some of those rebels will come round. For now, that seems to be the plan in Downing Street.

The stakes are impossibly high. Pulling the bill would raise serious questions about the prime minister’s authority. Pressing ahead and losing would raise even more.

The prime minister’s credibility and authority are on the line like never before.