Labour government quashes first rebellion

Good morning. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. The first major rebellion of the last Labour government came over cuts to lone parent benefits, necessitated because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had promised to stick to Conservative spending limits. Forty-seven Labour MPs voted against the government and many more went absent without leave.

In the end, just seven Labour MPs rebelled over the two-child benefit cap last night. But the rows over the two-child limit are far from over. Some more thoughts on that below.

Rebel rebel

The Labour government has seen off the first organised rebellion of its term in emphatic fashion and handed out the harshest of available punishments to the seven Labour rebels.

These two things are inextricably linked: when Tony Blair faced a rebellion over a cut to lone-parent child benefit back in 1997, the government planned to hand out harsh punishments to the rebels. The reason why he was unable to do so was because the rebellion was so large that any punishment was obviously untenable.

This time, facing a similar rebellion over welfare policy, the Labour whips were able to cap the rebellion at just seven, all but one of whom are among the leadership’s most consistent and implacable critics.

How did they do it? One big difference is that in 1997, Blair and Brown held fast against and gave the rebels nothing in the way of concessions. As a result, this led to a significant backbench revolt. Keir Starmer and his ministers — most importantly Liz Kendall, the welfare secretary and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, who co-chair a new child poverty task force — have signalled they will act to remove the two-child cap as soon as practicable. The task force includes a host of charities, all of which have called for the cap to be scrapped.

One reason why the rebellion was so limited is that Labour MPs have essentially been told that the cap is not long for this world: it may even be scrapped as soon as the first fiscal event. Another is that defeat on the King’s Speech, while vitally important because it is an issue of confidence (don’t forget that losing on the King’s Speech and failing to pass a Budget are the two mechanisms that traditionally force a general election or a motion of no confidence), was only ever a cosmetic way to scrap the cap. Many would-be rebels felt they were being asked to wound the government when all that was up for grabs was what they expected anyway, which is action on the policy in the government’s first proper fiscal event.

It will be more challenging for the Labour government to contain rebellions on votes where the limit is actually meaningfully up for grabs. It will get harder for it to contain rebellions over the issue and it will still have to act on it sooner rather than later.

Now try this

I am reading Haruki Murakami’s short-story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I love magical realism but I often find short story collections unsatisfying, as the individual pieces are either too bitty or too long. I’m not going to pretend that this collection has converted me to the cause of short story collections, but they are the perfect length to read on the Victoria Line to Westminster or the bus into work, so they have that going for them.

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