KEIR Starmer appeared to easily see off the first backbench rebellion of his premiership as Labour voted to keep two-child benefit cap.
But was the result all it seemed?
Labour MPs have been fairly open – even if they were not one of the seven who voted to scrap the policy – that they’re not happy about the situation.
They blame the Tories for the economic inheritance with which they have been lumped. Some of the Scots among them even tell their constituents to ask the Scottish Government about it instead.
No matter how cynical you are about the Labour Party, very few of them want child poverty to worsen on their watch.
Towards the fag end of their time in power, reducing child poverty was one of the central boasts of New Labour. It’s what a lot of these people got into politics for, though you may disagree with their methods.
While today’s effort by the SNP failed as it was always bound to, it does pose an existential question for Labour MPs: What are you here for?
It is one that will continue to haunt Labour throughout their time in power. It’s why Starmer is now so focused on “delivery” – “change” becomes stale quickly.
Come the next election, they must have concrete things to which they can point and say: “Look, see we did that, vote for me again!”
There is also a historical element to Labour’s anguish over attacks by the SNP from their left. For years, before the monumental political shifts in Scottish politics after the referendum, Labour and many voters saw the SNP as the “Tartan Tories”.
They would argue the SNP were responsible for letting Margaret Thatcher in back in 1979.
It’s wounding for them psychologically to be outflanked to the left by the SNP – that’s probably part of the reason they keep doing it.
One of the things that helped Starmer get over the line at this election was strict discipline within his party. He practically neutered the left and rigged internal processes in favour of party high command to ensure no candidates suffered from wrongthink.
But five years is an aeon in politics. Take the SNP as an object lesson in this. In 2019, after the party returned 48 MPs to Westminster under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, it was unthinkable they would find themselves in the situation they do now.
That discipline dissolved. Their iron leader gone.
Many within the new Labour intake are fundamentally technocrats. They are definitively not ideologues to such an extent that many of them would, in fact, view ideology as a dirty word.
Policy must be, in their view, directed by the evidence. The problem is, evidence can be interpreted in as many ways as there are new Labour MPs. Ideology would help guide them to apply the evidence in a way that tells a story.
The story they are looking for is that question the SNP have been posing for months: What’s the point in Labour?
As the Holyrood election fast approaches and Labour look to seize back control of the Scottish Government, that is a question for which they must find an answer.
