The Labour leadership has told you who it is, over and over again: it is time to believe it. Keir Starmer has suspended seven Labour MPs because they voted to overturn a Tory policy which imposes poverty on children. Sure, another tale will be spun: that by voting for the Scottish National party’s amendment to abolish the two-child benefit cap, the seven undermined the unity of the parliamentary Labour party and were duly disciplined. But that is nonsense.
Such parliamentary rebellions are scattered through our democratic history, and are accepted almost as a convention of government. Boris Johnson suspended multiple Brexit rebels in 2019 and it was rightly seen as an aberration. He did not, for example, exact the same punishment when five Tory MPs backed a Labour motion extending free school meals in 2020. When it comes to Labour history, even Tony Blair never resorted to such petty authoritarianism. Forty-seven Labour MPs rebelled over a cut to the lone parent benefit in 1997 – none had the whip removed.
This episode tells us many things. Firstly, it completely undermines Starmer’s slogan of choice: “country before party”. Starmer knows a policy devised by George Osborne to prevent parents from claiming benefits for a third or fourth child is cruel and fails on its own terms. When Starmer stood for leader, he promised to scrap the limit. After all, it imposes poverty on 300,000 kids, and drives another 700,000 further into hardship. Fifty-nine per cent of families affected have at least one parent in work – like the care workers, supermarket workers and cleaners applauded by politicians on porches and balconies during the pandemic. Research has found that it does not increase employment levels, and may actually make it harder to find work, while having no impact on family size. Charities have identified it as one of the single biggest generators of poverty in Britain.
It is hard to imagine Starmer is unaware of the fact that Osborne devised the policy to stoke public hostility towards and create a Victorian caricature of the undeserving, overbreeding poor. No decent society punishes children for choices they have not made and parents should not be punished for having more children. In Britain in 2024, kids turn up to schools with bowed legs and heart murmurs because of malnourishment, but a vast cost is also imposed on society as the scarring effect of poverty produces lasting lower productivity and employment levels.
Starmer knew this when he told the BBC almost exactly a year ago that he would retain this wicked Tory policy. He made the commitment to sound tough. Contrast with how he genuflects before powerful interests such as the Murdoch empire. By endorsing the two-child benefit cap, Starmer decided to gain partisan advantage, rather than fix an injustice afflicting his country. Party first, country second. Or rather, to be specific: playing politics with the lives of our most vulnerable children.
There isn’t the money available, we are told. The price tag is £1.7bn, a pittance given annual government expenditure is £1.2tr. According to the Sunday Times rich list, the 350 wealthiest British households have a combined fortune of £795bn: is leaving their taxes at the same level more important than parents skipping hot meals to feed their little ones? When Starmer told Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the UK would give Ukraine £3bn a year “for as long as it takes”, he acknowledged there is money available for what the government considers a priority. This Labour government simply does not regard child poverty as a priority.
In truth, this was an opportunity to give the left a kicking. But imagine prioritising factional score-settling over the hungry bellies of little children? Labour was founded to abolish hardship, and poverty is a form of violence unnecessarily imposed by a wealthy society on its citizens. Those seven Labour MPs who voted to rescue children from poverty marched through the voting lobbies to uphold their party’s traditions; the leadership’s behaviour has desecrated them.
Yes, under vast pressure, the Labour leadership may in time U-turn – after pretending to assess the evidence first when it is already there. Every day it does not act is another day hundreds of thousands of children live in poverty. But in any case, this tawdry matter underlines that this is a government without a political core – certainly without a soul – and one never driven by what is best for the people that Labour was founded to champion.
This complete detachment from its founding values is why there is such little enthusiasm for the new government and why its apparently large majority is in reality so shallow; the truth is that Labour was gifted a landslide thanks to the vagaries of our electoral system on a third of the vote, on the lowest turnout in British democratic history. By acting in this way, its limited popularity will only decline further.
Labour was already haemorrhaging support to independents and the Green party before taking office, with the latter now second place behind Labour in dozens of seats. Many now ask: what is Labour even for, if it not only refuses to overcome child poverty, but punishes those who seek to do so? It is a pertinent question, but this Labour leadership has already told you many times who it is, and it is time we took it at its word.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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