There was a telling moment at prime minister’s questions last week when a super-keen Labour backbencher used his moment in the spotlight to praise Keir Starmer as a “true statesman”. Mike Tapp was dripping with compliments for his boss as he argued that the Commons should be “united” in order to “achieve a lasting peace” in Ukraine. It’s not unusual for ambitious MPs to offer these kinds of seemingly pointless questions at PMQs: for them, they have a very important function of highlighting their loyalty to the boss they hope will promote them, and also giving that boss a bit of a breather in between more hostile interventions from across the chamber. But there was also something slightly plaintive in the request for the House to remain united, because it can’t, and won’t.
Starmer has rightly been praised from across the political spectrum for the calm way he handled the meltdown in the Oval Office. His careful management of the relationship between the US and UK, and the way he convened European leaders at short notice to plan a “coalition of the willing” to protect Ukraine was indeed statesmanlike behaviour. But in the next few weeks, he is going to be brought back down to earth – and to domestic matters – with a bump. Not only will the opposition parties start asking difficult questions again, but his own side is not exactly united. Perhaps Tapp was trying to persuade his own colleagues to stick by the prime minister as much as he was pre-emptively scolding the opposition for anything other than non-stop agreement.
Managing a party when in government is always like dealing with a dripping tap in a bathtub: at some point, the disappointments will mount to the extent that there is a flood. That flood might come some time after a prime minister and his cabinet have really annoyed their backbenchers. When the government cuts benefits early on in its tenure, those backbenchers might still feel bound, as Tapp suggested, to be outriders for the government rather than speak their minds in public. But that doesn’t mean they’re not angry, frustrated at having to explain to their constituents why the Labour party has removed their entitlement to disability benefits, for instance. The bathtub fills up a lot, which means that the flood will come sooner.
Cutting disability benefits is not just a “for instance” hypothetical, though: it is something that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is very likely to announce in the next few weeks. The Department for Work and Pensions is about to publish its green paper on welfare reform ahead of the budget, with Reeves hoping to cut several billion pounds off the ballooning benefits bill. The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that the share of the working age population in receipt of incapacity benefit will rise from 7% in 2023-24 to an all-time high of 7.9% by 2028-29.
Reeves has spoken about “support to get back to work”, with the likelihood being that claimants will find their entitlement to out of work benefits squeezed and there being a greater onus on them to find a job. But she hasn’t ruled out tightening the personal independence payment (PIP), which is not linked to whether someone is in or out of work. Neither cut will sit well for a Labour party that has always struggled to feel comfortable with any kind of welfare cut, even if the public is entirely supportive.
The bath already has a fair volume of disappointments in it after the row over the winter fuel payment. Many Labour MPs have found it extremely hard to justify restricting that benefit to those on pension credit. Some of them are now additionally fatigued by the recent cut to international development spending, another policy area that often forms part of a Labour MP’s identity and values.
A good number of left and soft-left MPs are furious about the prospect of benefit cuts, even if Reeves and Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, couch those announcements in the language of reform. The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, made a striking argument last week for a “moral case here for making sure that people who can work are able to work”, adding that “our current situation is unsustainable”. Labour figures are acutely aware that their party has long struggled with a reputation for fiscal incontinence and for being soft on benefits.
But welfare is an important part of the Labour DNA: the party still celebrates being the creator of the modern welfare state almost as much as it does founding the NHS. Its MPs have often been drawn into politics to protect people from benefit cuts – particularly the cuts announced in the Tory austerity measures over the past 14 years – and have spent far less time thinking about the overall bill.
Still, few of them will speak out in public against the cuts when they are announced, other than those who have long been outspoken, like Diane Abbott. “Privately, lots of people are raging,” says one MP, but another who is also unhappy about the spending cuts thus far and fearful of what is to come suggests that there will be “very little pushback”. More MPs have started to voice their concerns to one another in the tearoom, though the party WhatsApp groups are still largely well behaved. Most MPs (with a few daft exceptions) recognise that once you share something in a large messaging group, you might as well have sent it out by press release, and so a grumpy WhatsApp message is now seen as quite a rebellious move. Most are still very much in the frame of mind where they want the government to succeed, and are supportive of Reeves, thinking she has a near impossible job.
Starmer and colleagues have been busy doing as much outreach as they can to prevent the disappointment mounting too quickly. The prime minister has been having meetings with small groups of his MPs where he discusses policy and strategy with them. He also has the promise of further unpaid jobs that keep idle backbenchers from plotting, with more MPs getting special “champion” roles covering different sectors and regions of the UK. The value of being a “national health recovery mission champion”, along with having a job title so long that you’ve little breath left to criticise the government, is that a backbencher feels busy and important, connected to the government rather than left out and at the mercy of unpopular decisions.
There has not yet been a specific outreach programme on cuts and reform by Kendall and her colleagues to MPs, but, as the green paper comes out and the detail of the cuts emerges, that will have to change. Kendall herself is considered to be a well-engaged minister who likes to be present around parliament so that MPs can chat to her, but that tends not to be enough when a department is in the thick of a storm about cuts. While she gets on well with Reeves – the two are described as being “genuinely friends” – there is still a level of distrust between the Treasury and the DWP (though this is not specific to DWP: Treasury officials tend not to trust any department that spends a lot of money).
That question of trust is an important one for the relationship between the parliamentary party and ministers, particularly Reeves. She has not had an easy few months and, while most of her colleagues want her to succeed, they have had to watch the “iron chancellor” operating as more of an iron monger, bending her fiscal rules in order to have a chance of meeting them. If they stop trusting that she is on the right course, then they will find it harder to keep the faith during what will inevitably be an extremely emotional and painful set of benefit cuts.
Of course, the longer a government delays those cuts, the closer the bath is to overflowing and the less likely it is that those cuts will happen at all. Some of the MPs who are particularly opposed to the cuts also happen to be very annoyed with Starmer and Reeves, and quite hopeful that they may be able to remove the former. They won’t speak out because they are biding their time until that bath does overflow and there is a flood of resentment in the wider Labour party that they can then take advantage of. So don’t be deceived if the party seems relatively peaceful and united over the next few months. The tap is still dripping.
• Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and a presenter of Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster
