Keir Starmer caved in to party rebels over the benefit cuts that were vital reforms not 5 minutes ago, says Fleet Street Fox. You could be forgiven for wondering who’s in charge
There is a knack to reversing ferrets, and Keir Starmer hasn’t got it.
Having sent almost 4million disabled people into a tailspin, he chewed through a 165-seat majority to provoke his party into its biggest rebellion for years. He insisted he wasn’t caving even as he strapped on a headtorch and flippers, and then caved only halfway. He’s suffered a massive loss of personal political power, and guaranteed future rebellions to undermine him even further.
Here’s how the Prime Minister’s team ought to have done it: 1) Don’t cut the means which disabled people use to get into work and society in the first place, you gonks. 2) Pay attention to the first rumblings. Is it coming from the actual ground you’re standing on? 3) Look bendier, earlier. 4) Don’t save face – earns points for honesty and humility.
Faced with rebellion, Keir should have swept the entire benefits bill off the table a week ago, make like he was knocking Cabinet heads together, and bring it back in a month with concessions. Instead he looks indecisive, malleable, and his credibility has been holed below the waterline. Again.
But the story being told about Starmer is not how he really is. When he’s acted instinctively and relied on his judgement it’s worked well – the rapid courts crackdown after the Southport riots, the firm-but-friendly dealing with Donald Trump, the trade deals. Statesmanship appears to be something he can do, and do well.
It’s the stuff he delegates that trips him up. Rachel Reeves was persuaded by Treasury officials to cut the winter fuel payment, and he didn’t overrule her. Liz Kendall came up with the benefits reforms, and the son of a toolmaker and a chronically-disabled woman didn’t say “‘do what, now?” Now the Hillsborough Law he’s promised four times and already delayed once is on-course to expose him to fresh allegations of incompetence.
This piece of anti-scandal legislation was always intended to make it illegal for a public official to lie, as they have done in courts, to ministers, and at inquests and inquiries over the 1989 football disaster, infected blood, the Post Office scandal and dozens more. It protects junior staff who get ordered to lie by superiors, as happened when senior officers told constables to rewrite their pocket books to cover-up police failures at Hillsborough. Introducing such a law is a legacy that will save the state billions in compensation, and forever mark the PM that did it as a moral crusader. It is, unarguably, A Good Thing All Round.
And senior civil servants in Whitehall hate it. They claim it’s unworkable and they’ll get arrested for taking the paperclips home. Seeing as the families’ draft of the bill states the criminality only kicks in for “court proceedings, official inquiries and investigations where their acts or omissions may be relevant”, it’s a reach. Yet ministers and SpAds have taken it as gospel, and told the families the bill must be watered down so it applies only when giving evidence under oath.
But here’s the thing: there is no middle ground. You either tell the truth, or you don’t. Officials have told campaigners: “We f***ed up… we should never have promised the families what they wanted.” Which is the same as saying that Starmer f***ed up, by making the promise to grieving mothers, by stating it in his conference speeches, and putting it in his election manifesto.
As one person with knowledge of the process told me: “Putting politics aside, this Government is showing awesome ineptitude. It could be an easy win for Starmer but his team seems determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
There is no clearer way to indicate the Prime Minister isn’t driving the train, than his underlings telling people he’s consistently wrong. If the officials succeed in destroying the central requirement of legislation the PM has ordained, he might as well take to his bed for the next four years and have done with it.
There is one glimmer of hope: when it comes to choosing between his power base and the demands of officials, Starmer bends the knee to his backbenchers. More than 120 Labour MPs signed the amendment which undermined the PIP cut s – more than 140 have already signed a letter demanding he deliver the Hillsborough Law he promised.
If a corrupted, asinine version of the legislation gets before Parliament, the rebellion will be greater. Party conference in Liverpool will be torture. Activists, councillors, MPs and peers will unite to rise up against a leader they will see as the man who trampled the dead. “It will be war,” one Labour insider told me. “It will make the PIP rebellion look like a pat on the back.”
The PM has yet to realise he’s landed a job running a fudge factory, and nothing will ever be neat and tidy. But his party contains more functioning eyes, ears, and political antennae than Downing Street does, and a year in, they are flexing their muscles. This summer Starmer will be asked to show who’s in charge of Britain – his MPs, the Whitehall officials, or the man he can be, when and if he tries.
