The left-wing Labour MP argues that Labour needs to show it’s on the side of working class people, not millionaires.
Nadia Whittome’s voice carries a mixture of exhaustion and determination as she speaks about Labour’s proposed cuts to disability benefits. She doesn’t hide the fact that this isn’t the only policy choice Labour has made in the last 11 months that has disappointed her, but she won’t stand by. On migrant and trans rights, Gaza, the climate crisis and other social justice issues that she passionately believes in, “I’m going to be relentlessly continuing to raise my voice,” the Labour MP tells Left Foot Forward.
There is a particularly personal dimension to the disability benefit cuts for Whittome. She has a chronic illness, and received disability benefits herself earlier in her life.
Now, Labour plans to tighten the criteria for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which could see around 370,000 people lose support. The government is also proposing to reduce Universal Credit payments for people with health issues — with new claimants potentially seeing cuts of up to 50%, while existing claimants face a freeze until 2029. According to Politico, ministers are planning to introduce a bill to Parliament containing the controversial disability benefit cuts this week.
This means the showdown vote could take place as soon as the week of 30 June.
“I think fighting against these disability cuts and the rollback of trans rights and regressive and aggressive steps on immigration policy, especially the disability cuts as a disabled person… I’m feeling it very sharply,” she says.
But the MP for Nottingham East is quick to shift the focus away from herself. “Obviously, that’s not the point. The people who will feel it most sharply are the people who are going to be plunged into poverty because of these proposed cuts.”
The rebellion against PIP cuts
Whittome is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, which veteran left-wing MPs such as Diane Abbott and John McDonnell are part of. In a debate on the proposed PIP cuts last month, she highlights that opposition to the cuts did not just come from her group. “There were other MPs, not just left-wing MPs, who made really strong contributions,” she says.
She explains that it is difficult for any MP to speak out against their own government, “but I think that’s particularly tough if you’re an MP who’s just been elected, and you certainly did not expect this.”
Whittome supports lifting the two-child benefit cap, which the government has so far not committed to abolishing. Although she did not vote for the SNP amendment to King’s Speech last July, which called for the cap to be lifted, she expressed her support for abolishing it during the debate.
She shares her disappointment that Keir Starmer removed the whip from seven Labour MPs who supported the SNP amendment. “I made it clear [to the whip] that it wasn’t acceptable and I spoke out about it afterwards and called on the party to reinstate my colleagues,” she says, describing the suspensions as “a blow to the campaign group”. At PMQs recently, she asked Starmer why the government hasn’t committed to scrapping the cap, which she referred to as “the most cost-effective way to cut child poverty”.
Despite the difficulties of diverging from party lines, Whittome predicts that there will be significant opposition at the upcoming vote on benefit cuts, stating, “the rebellion will be huge”.
Growing up under Tory austerity
I wonder how Whittome manages to continue speaking up so tirelessly. The 28-year-old became politicised at a young age due to her experience as a teenager under Tory austerity. She says: “I think it was kind of from when the Conservative coalition government was elected in 2010 that I really became politicised. I think because of the destruction of everything around us.”
Her family’s benefits were cut. She hoped to claim Education Maintenance Allowance, which she said would have really helped her, but the Tories scrapped it just before she started college. Young people were left languishing on CAMHS waiting lists.
The first issue she campaigned on was the Conservative coalition government’s bedroom tax. Again, the policy resonated with her personally, as it affected people living on her estate in Nottingham.
“I just thought that it was such a foul, cruel policy and I wanted to be part of the fightback against it. I felt like it was something that was just so evil, that surely we could win,” she reflects.
As an activist, she realised that the issues she campaigned on also required legislative change and that she needed to influence Parliament. That was the reason she became an MP. At age 23, she joined Parliament, making her the youngest MP, the “Baby of the House” at the time.
Five years on, she still believes that change comes from grassroots movements: “It’s fought for from below, and then those fights are won, leading people in power to implement those changes. That’s how it’s been throughout history.”
Even when fighting for change is hard, she says: “My faith has always been in our movement. And that’s something that even when it gets very hopeless, you can’t erode that.”
Pushing Labour to go further
Is the Labour government delivering the change she had always hoped for?
She feels Labour has taken “some really good steps”, including with the employment rights’ bill, their plans to end no fault evictions, and Ed Miliband’s work on green energy.
However, she adds, “Of course they can go further, and I’ve been pushing them to go further, but it’s just been really frustrating to have to battle some of the basics like Palestine, welfare, obviously trans rights, foreign aid.”
Whittome says the local elections showed that Labour’s first ten months in office “haven’t been good enough,” and the party needs to listen and change course. She warns that if it fails to do so, it risks “not only not being elected for a second term but handing power to a far-right government.”
She is relieved that the government has decided to restore the winter fuel payment to 7.5 million pensioners, but stresses that “it shouldn’t have been taken away in the first place”.
‘We’re not on the side of multi-millionaires’
The Tories have eroded people’s trust during their 15 years in power, Whittome says. To fight Reform UK, Whittome says Labour has to rebuild people’s trust in politics and build an economy that cares.
“It should be the mission of a Labour government to reduce inequality, tackle poverty, end austerity, not continue it, reverse it.
“I think the way that we restore that trust is by showing whose side we’re on. We’re not on the side of multi-millionaires, millionaires, billionaires or multinational corporations.
“We’re on the side of working-class people, that’s regardless of whether they’re able to be in work or not, regardless of the country that they were born in, the colour of their skin, their gender, their gender identity, their sexuality, their immigration status,” she says.
Whittome explains that the Labour government has inherited an economy that works for the super-rich: “It was built for the super-rich and it has seen working class people living in poverty and working in exploitative conditions.”
Building an economy that cares
There is an alternative. She says what we need “is to build an economy that cares for people and the planet.” That means introducing a wealth tax, and scrapping restrictive fiscal rules: “The black hole would disappear if you adjust the fiscal rules.”
For Whittome, a healthy economy should be measured by the well-being of its people and their quality of life, rather than just by GDP and debt.
“For me, the measure of how well the economy is doing is how well people are,” she says.
“Do we have a functioning society? Where people can get a GP appointment, a dental appointment, there are enough school places, where everyone has enough to not just put food on the table and keep the lights on, and pay the rent, but also live a comfortable life.”
These are all important questions to address if people are to feel Labour is delivering the change they voted for.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Left Foot Forward doesn’t have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
