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LONDON — Three years is a long time in politics.
In February 2020, Keir Starmer vowed to scrap a controversial Conservative social security rule in a bid to “tackle the vast social injustice in our country.”
Fast forward to July 2023, and the Labour leader confirmed he is “not changing that policy” — sparking an internal row and drawing ire from some of his colleagues.
The Labour leader’s new position on the two-child benefits cap — which prevents British parents from claiming welfare benefits for more than two children — is just the latest in a sequence of U-turns on policies he and his allies once championed, as the party readies for government and points to a grim economic backdrop.
One Labour MP — on the party’s “soft left” wing — told POLITICO on Sunday night that they were “livid”.
“I’m baffled why we won’t pledge to reverse this … Why aren’t we being consulted? Nobody voted for Keir Starmer to make these decisions without even referring to experienced backbenchers,” the MP said.
Another Labour MP, who backed Starmer’s 2020 leadership bid, said there was a lot of unhappiness in Labour’s parliamentary ranks “from left to right.”
The rumblings are likely to continue as the parliamentary Labour party prepares to meet Monday evening — especially since many of Starmer’s most senior colleagues team have been publicly scathing about the two-child benefits cap during his three years at the top.
POLITICO has collated all the times Starmer’s frontbenchers attacked a policy that their leader now backs.
Starmer’s welfare guy, Jonathan Ashworth
Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary could not have been much clearer on his views in an interview with the Mirror last month.
“We are very, very aware that this is one of the single most heinous elements of the system which is pushing children and families into poverty today,” Ashworth said of the two-child cap.
And he warned that “the idea that this policy helps move people into work is completely offensive nonsense.”
Starmer’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner
The second most senior politician in the shadow cabinet gave the policy — which her leader now backs — both barrels in 2020.
“The obscene and inhumane two child cap must go, as must the five week wait,” Angela Rayner tweeted, linking to a Guardian article — which reported British Pregnancy Advisory Service research linking to the policy to women’s decisions on abortion.
Her team said Sunday that she wasn’t available to clarify her position on the cap.
Lieutenants say they’d ax the cap
Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh (May 2020), Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens (August 2021) and Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds (July 2021) have all said Labour policy was to abolish the cap, in press releases on poverty in the U.K.
Expect them to be asked if this is still the case the next time they appear in TV and radio studios.
No, you ax the cap
In an article for her local Wigan Today newspaper, Shadow Leveling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy didn’t just say a Labour government would abolish the two-child welfare limit — she urged the current Conservative government to get on with it now.
“The government must also commit … to abolish the two-child limit on Universal Credit and Tax Credits,” she wrote.
Back to 2015
When the policy — the brainchild of former Chancellor George Osborne — was being introduced in 2015 as part of the Conservative government’s Welfare Bill, a number of Labour MPs and current shadow cabinet members tried to block the specific measures limiting welfare benefits given to larger families.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry and Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed all signed amendments to the bill aimed at stopping benefits from being “restricted in respect of a maximum number of children.”
Eleni Courea contributed reporting.
