A Labour MP has said she “slept well” after being suspended by the party over a Commons rebellion on the two-child benefit cap – and suggested she was the victim of a “macho virility test”.
Zarah Sultana, one of seven from the party’s left stripped of the whip on Tuesday night for backing an SNP motion to scrap the cap, said on Wednesday: “I slept well knowing that I took a stand against child poverty that is affecting 4.3 million people in this country and it is the right thing to do and I am glad I did it.”
The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the former business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, along with Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Sultana, have been suspended.
Keir Starmer faces prime minister’s questions on Wednesday for the first time since entering No 10 amid a backlash over the move.
Sultana said she saw an email on the way home from the vote last night telling her she had had the whip removed. Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, she said: “I look forward to many bills that will be coming forward in this government including nationalising rail, the new deal for working people, but I was also very honest that we should go further, we can make a real difference to people’s lives.
“And when you’ve got anti-poverty campaigners, thinktanks, trade unions saying the key driver for child poverty in this country – which is the sixth-largest economy in the world – is the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, then it is a moral imperative on the Labour party to scrap that and do everything that they can to make sure that not a single child has to live in unnecessary hardship and poverty.”
Asked for her view of Starmer, she later told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m not interested in playing up to this macho virility test that seems to be what people are talking about. It’s about the material conditions of 330,000 children living in poverty. This isn’t a game. This is about people’s lives.”
The House of Commons voted 363 to 103 to reject the amendment tabled in the name of the SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.
The cap, introduced in 2015 by the then chancellor, George Osborne, restricts child welfare payments to the first two children born to most families.
Before the vote, Starmer had said there was “no silver bullet” to end child poverty but acknowledged the “passion” of MPs who were considering opposing the continuation of the Tory measure.
The move to suspend MPs from the party’s left was seen as an unprecedented response to an early rebellion and sent shock waves through the party, drawing criticism from some MPs who voted with the government.
A number of MPs said they were taken aback by the whipping operation, designed to send a signal to new MPs about rebelling early in the parliament. Before the vote, McDonnell had said: “I don’t like voting for other parties’ amendments but I’m following Keir Starmer’s example as he said put country before party.”
All seven have had the whip suspended for six months, when there will be a review. Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, said she was not informed in advance the whip would be suspended if she voted for the motion, but it would not have changed her vote.
Asked if the whip was restored in six months would she go back to Labour, she told Today: “In six months’ time I hope that the cap has been abolished, and in that time I will obviously go through the process with the party and continue to stick to my principles and speak up for my constituents who re-elected me to champion causes such as scrapping the two-child benefit cap.”
The former Labour MP and shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth, now head of the thinktank Labour Together after losing his Leicester South seat, told the Today programme Labour MPs should be expected to defend the party’s first king’s speech in 14 years in the voting lobby.
“To join with the odds and sods of Gaza independents and Greens and Nats is frankly a futile gesture when we know the parliamentary arithmetic has changed. Sir Keir Starmer has a commanding majority. And the government is not unsympathetic to the cause. It has announced a child poverty review. The right way to effect change is not the parliamentary games of last night but to engage with that review.”
