Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has vowed that the UK government “will go ahead” with next week’s vote on welfare reform in the face of the biggest potential rebellion of Labour MPs since the party took office almost a year ago.
“What I can tell him . . . is we will go ahead on Tuesday,” Rayner told Sir Mel Stride, the Conservative’s shadow chancellor, following speculation across Westminster that the bill could be pulled or postponed.
Rayner, who was covering at Prime Minister’s Questions for Sir Keir Starmer as he attends the Nato summit in The Hague, launched a full-throated defence of the reforms despite more than 120 Labour MPs signing an amendment that aims to kill the bill.
“I’ll tell the right honourable member why we’re pressing ahead with our reforms,” Rayner said.
“We won’t walk away and stand by and abandon millions of people trapped in the failing system left behind by him and his colleagues.”
The government’s pledge to push forward raises the spectre of the first defeat for Starmer’s government, despite Labour’s huge majority of 156 seats that it won last summer.
If 80 Labour MPs vote against the government, along with the Tories and Liberal Democrats, it will be enough to kill the legislation, causing severe political embarrassment for Starmer and blowing a £5bn hole in the government’s annual budget.
MPs say a defeat could lead to a significant weakening of Starmer’s authority within the party or to senior ministers losing their positions.
“If they go through with this and lose the vote — as I strongly suspect they would if they don’t change course — it is going to require a major reset of the cabinet to restore the PM’s authority and that might mean some senior heads could have to roll,” one Labour MP said.
The rebellion has brewed during a time when Starmer has primarily been overseas or dealing with international matters such as the Israeli and US strikes on Iran, sparking some frustration among backbench MPs.
Changes proposed in the welfare bill would result in about 800,000 fewer people being entitled to disability benefits, many of whom need help washing themselves or using the toilet.
One Labour whip, Vicky Foxcroft, resigned last week in protest against the legislation.
Rebel Labour MPs say two parliamentary private secretaries and three junior ministers say privately that they will vote against the government.
MPs have reported heavy-handed tactics from the leadership, including threats of future deselection, removal from select committees or even removing funding pledges from rebels’ constituencies.
There is also believed to be a major split within the cabinet between those determined to face down the rebels and others keen to seek a compromise.
Andy McDonald, MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, said it was foolish of some loyalists to present the vote as a confidence issue on Starmer’s leadership when it was not.
“I don’t know why they would try to elevate it to that; no one is saying they don’t have confidence in the government. This is the wrong policy and they need to re-examine it.”
Starmer said earlier in the day that “there will be a vote on Tuesday, we’re going to make sure we reform the welfare system”.
“We have to reform it, and that is a Labour argument, it’s a progressive argument,” the prime minister added.
Stride, the Conservative shadow chancellor, asked Rayner — who is widely believed to have leadership ambitions and who is popular with the left of the party — whether she was really “convinced” by the welfare policy.
“The people behind her are not convinced, and neither are the public,” Stride said at PMQs.
“Isn’t she even a little embarrassed to be defending policies she doesn’t even believe in herself?”
Rayner said she was embarrassed for “the mess Conservatives left the country in”.
