Last night Keir Starmer was forced to make a ‘dramatic climbdown’ over the Welfare Reform Bill, showing that he cannot hide from the unpopularity of his policies anymore.
While the Welfare Bill has been passed, it is in a much weaker form than the Labour leadership had hoped. Earlier, 126 Labour MPs had defied the whip over the bill forcing significant changes to the brutal reforms which threatened to push 250,000 people into poverty, with potentially life-threatening effects for some and a devastating impact on struggling NHS services.
The concessions included limiting disability benefit cuts to only new claimants and some other small tweaks, but these weren’t enough. To appease the backbench rebellion and help get the bill over the line, Starmer then conceded that PIP cuts planned for 2026 would be shelved until after a serious review. Nonetheless, 49 Labour MPs voted against the amended bill at its second reading last night.
Starmer’s credibility has been seriously damaged, with the Times saying Labour rebels now know that if they push, Starmer will back down.
They’re right, and it’s an important lesson that all campaigners must learn.
It’s also no coincidence that much of the press coverage includes reporting and pictures of the widespread protests against the proposed bill, many of which Keep Our NHS Public have supported, including those in Leeds, London ahead of the vote.
That Starmer made any concessions is a huge victory for all those who protested and campaigned against the bill, especially DPAC and the other disabled people’s organisations that lead the charge. Nonetheless, the entire bill must be opposed and Keep Our NHS Public supports DPAC and others in their continuing campaigns against it.
According to John McDonnell MP writing in the Guardian, the whole process of the bill was ‘chaos’. He goes on to say that
‘with his authority damaged by poor judgment, absence of leadership and a sheer lack of understanding of what the Labour party exists for, Starmer will stumble on weakened and directionless’.
What does this mean for Keep Our NHS Public and those who want to see a similar climbdown on Starmer and Streeting’s NHS policies?
We’re expecting to see the long-awaited NHS Long Term Plan released later this week. From what we know so far, it will do nothing near what is needed to end the NHS crisis.
It also looks like the Government will continue to pave the way for more privatisation. The Government pushes this, even though private health companies are leaching money from already cash-strapped services and doing more harm than good, as the recent investigation into private cataract clinics making millions from the NHS has shown. The Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has warned that ‘growing the private sector is no way to prevent the NHS becoming a poor service for poor people’.
Once the Long Term Plan is released in full, we will be working hard to unravel what it really means and putting together briefings and other resources as fast as we can.
When we do that, we can take from last night’s Welfare Bill rebellion a real confidence that this government can be forced to give way.
The Labour Party under Starmer (again, in the words of McDonnell) has undergone a ‘hollowing out of democracy… which enables a centralisation of power under a self-serving bureaucracy that is effectively out of control.’
While this is true, the current leadership is no longer operating under the illusion it can always get its own way, nor will it even be confident it can dominate its own back benches.
This gives those of us who want to influence the direction of travel the space to insert ourselves and our messaging. It is why we continue to reach out to Parliamentarians across the house who agree with us about the NHS and what it needs.
But it also shows the centrality of the protest movement in bringing pressure to bear on those MPs who are not already convinced of our cause.
When we work together and campaign on a broad platform against the obviously unpopular policies of this government, as DPAC and others have done over the bill, we see clearly that we can make a difference.
Find out how your MP voted last night here.
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