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Sir Keir Starmer has refused to back down on his plans to overhaul the UK’s welfare system, despite the growing spectre of a rebellion by Labour MPs over the issue that they say cost the party support at this month’s local elections.
Speaking in Albania, the prime minister said he would not shy away from difficult changes he believes are necessary.
“The system as it is, is not working,” he said. “Therefore it needs to be reformed . . . the argument for reform is overwhelming and that’s why we will get on and we will reform.”
Starmer is set to face the biggest House of Commons rebellion of his premiership next month in a vote on cuts to disability and incapacity benefits that would reduce support offered to more than 3mn people.
Roughly 100 MPs have quietly signed a secret letter to the chief whip urging ministers to make several tweaks to the welfare policy, in a clear sign of the rising discontent in the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour party.
Only about half of that number of expected to vote against the government.
Even a rebellion of 50 of the party’s 403 MPs will not be enough to defeat the government given its huge majority in the chamber. Yet there are growing signs of unease among the swelled ranks of Labour MPs.
A series of decisions by the government in recent weeks on issues from foreign aid to welfare and immigration have left many of his own MPs demoralised — frustration compounded by this month’s English local elections drubbing at the hands of Reform UK.
“If the government continue down this path we will head for existential self-destruction,” said Rachael Maskell, an MP and former frontbencher.
She warned that the party’s tilt to the right — intended to neutralise the threat from Nigel Farage’s rightwing populist party — would alienate its core supporters.
“The people I talk to feel a deep dismay as policy after policy that has come out, which is not Labour politics,” she said.
“Our usual coalition of support is just melting away, and people who support progressive politics are going to the Greens or Lib Dems because they think they are more progressive, whether it’s on migration or on welfare.”
Many of the still anonymous signatories to the letter are newly elected MPs, according to people with knowledge of the matter, and only a handful are from the “hard left” wing of the party known as the Campaign Group.
“They are not wanting to be public and trying to be constructive and engaging with the government,” said one Labour figure.
“But there is a feeling that some of these welfare reforms are not what Labour stands for. Yes, we are the party of work, but reducing the support system for people who can’t help themselves doesn’t feel right.”
Next week, Starmer will appear before the PLP, in his first appearance since the local election results that also saw the party lose the Runcorn and Helsby by-election to Reform.
Changes to the benefit system were partly to blame for Labour losing the seat, with local voters complaining about last year’s removal of the winter fuel payment and the imminent package of welfare reforms that includes stricter criteria for the personal independence payment, or Pip, a key disability benefit.
The group of about 100 Labour MPs is asking for concessions on the cuts to the health element of the universal credit, and a full assessment of the impact of the reforms on the disabled.
The number of MPs that signed the letter is striking given that many long-standing parliamentarians were not even asked.
One person who signed the letter said a “large number” of the new MPs “have been squeezed really, really hard [and] a lot of them have been made to feel grateful for getting their seat”.
There have been “been such hard conversations around disability payments,” this person added. “The whips have been tough, the Speaker has been tough, they’ve felt very controlled.”
MPs were promised that if they signed the letter it would not be made public, only for its existence — if not the names — to be revealed in The Times. “It’s awful that it has been leaked, people are dismayed,” said one.
The growing dissent over welfare reforms follows concerns about the halving of the overseas aid budget to fund higher defence spending earlier in the year.
Many Labour MPs are also unhappy about Monday’s announcement by Starmer of a package of measures designed to bring down immigration and his language suggesting Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” without action.
Some MPs are worried that if the government sticks to its fiscal rules and tries to avoid further tax rises it could have to make more welfare cuts in the Autumn Budget.
Nick Williams, a former Downing Street economic adviser to Starmer, warned on Thursday that the current path of public spending was simply “not credible”.
“The bottom line is that taxes will have to go up,” he said. “There are ways this can be done which are fair and respect manifesto promises. This is also realistically the last opportunity to make a meaningful change that the public has time to feel before the next election.”
