Keir Starmer is facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership so far with up to 80 of his own MPs furious about plans to slash Britain’s benefits bill.
Dozens of Labour MPs are said to oppose the Prime Minister’s plan to use the savings for an increase in defence spending and to bolster the public finances.
They are planning to write to the PM and Treasury outlining their complaints ahead of the Spring Statement on March 26.
Reforms to the welfare system are expected ahead of the Spring Statement, as Chancellor Rachel Reeves will likely look to make a raft of public spending savings given tighter fiscal headroom.
Incapacity and disability benefits currently cost £64.7billion and this is predicted to rise to £100.7billion by 2030.
One MP on the left of the Labour Party blasted a series of “missteps and silly decisions”, adding around 80 MPs are furious about the planned welfare cuts.
They said: “I’ve spoken to not the usual suspects… the first thing they’ve said to me after a few minutes saying how things are going is: ‘I’m going to give the Government a slap, I’ve had enough, I don’t know what it will be, but I’m at the end of my tether. I need to show my constituents, I need to show people that I have my own brain, that I’m not going to suck up all of this.’
They warned the “Ukraine bounce” that allowed Sir Keir to raise defence spending will not last forever, with disaffected voters at risk of turning to Reform UK or the Green Party at the next election.
“The fundamentals haven’t changed,” they said. « And one of the things we know about the kind of instability in politics at the moment is that the electorate are fickle. This isn’t going to be his Falklands moment. He’s got four years left.”
A second Labour backbencher warned that colleagues are “not happy” with the welfare cuts, adding: “You can do what you like to insulate MPs during the week when they’re all in the House of Commons, but you can’t insulate them from what people are saying to them on the doorstep.”
A third MP said they would be “amazed” if colleagues did not put their concerns in a letter to the Treasury, stating that people beyond the Labour Left were “deeply concerned and uncomfortable”.
“They don’t believe it’s necessary and it’s not what they got involved in Labour politics to do,” they said.
Rachael Maskell suggested she had detected « deep, deep concern » from colleagues in the Commons, amid risks of a rift between the Government and the back benches.
Speaking to the BBC‘s Westminster Hour on Sunday, Ms Maskell, the MP for York Central, said that she has had a « flurry of emails » from people who are « deeply concerned » about the prospect of changes to the system.
She told the programme: « We recognise the economic circumstances that we’re in and the hand that we were given and of course it is right that the Chancellor has oversight over all those budgets but not at the expense of pushing disabled people into poverty. »
She added: « There’s got to be a carrot approach not a stick approach. »We’ve got to make the right interventions and that doesn’t start with the stick. »
Ms Maskell said that she had « picked up […] deep deep concern » from colleagues and called for a « compassionate system and not taking just draconian cuts ».
Meanwhile, The Times reported on Sunday evening that a group of 36 new MPs would be rowing in behind the Government and had written a letter to the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall backing reforms to the system.
Ministers have made clear in recent weeks that there will be an overhaul given the « unsustainable rise in welfare spending ».
Ms Kendall has already told Cabinet colleagues that the current system is « holding back the economy » and « bad for people’s wellbeing and health ».
Downing Street said on Friday that the « broken security system is holding our people back ».
Diane Abbott, the veteran Labour MP, also warned the Government against slashing benefits to fund its priorities.
“I and a lot of other people are very worried about the burden of the cuts in order to spend more money on defence and so on, that it should fall on welfare, and in particular that it should fall on the disabled,” she said.
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