If the concessions offered by Downing Street to Labour MPs on Friday aren’t enough to limit the rebellion and get the welfare package through on Tuesday, this government is over. A party elected almost exactly a year ago with a working majority of 165 would have come to the end of its real, effective, working life.
The stakes were that high, which is why the series of meetings conducted by Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall with the rebel chairs of select committees on Tuesday and Wednesday may go down as the most important conversations so far in the life of this young government. Even now, a quantity of MPs are refusing to buckle.
Once two groups of potential rebels had been excluded – those really out for “regime change” and the heads of senior ministers, and those in favour of benefit reform only in theory – the Prime Minister and his top team focused on the third, largest rebel group: MPs who felt the changes would destroy the Labour vote in their constituencies, but who really wanted to find a compromise.
Problems with the bill were real, but this battle was also about perceptions: even if only a tenth of disabled people on personal independent payments were going to lose their benefit, 100 per cent of claimants, very large numbers of voters, thought it might be them. “The perception was that we were going to take benefits away from wheelchair users with chronic conditions, and we couldn’t get away from that,” one insider says.
So, the key decision was to allow existing claimants to keep their benefit without having to go through the new four-point system. Starmer had been warned about the seriousness of the problem a fortnight ago but when he made that decision this week, after returning from the Nato summit, there was a visible sense of the crisis easing.
“We were pleasantly surprised at how constructive the committee chairs were on Thursday – they were also looking for a resolution,” says one of those involved.
It is likely that a terrible parliamentary smash has been avoided at the last minute. It was a deliberate decision in No 10 to leave things late, so there wasn’t a long process of more and more demands for more and more concessions in the run-up to the vote. But the cost of that was panic in parliament and dreadful headlines.
Which are, perhaps, the least of it. The £5bn saving planned will now be much less. If the markets conclude that this is becoming a government unable to control public spending, the country will pay a further painful premium. We are already paying higher borrowing costs than our neighbours because of the Liz Truss disaster; the UK’s credibility is already on the edge.
Then there is the political cost. The Prime Minister’s poll ratings were dire even before this episode. Perception again: after recent U-turns on winter fuel and the national inquiry on grooming gangs, is this a man who has lost control of the events? Successful leadership is about authority and credibility. Lose those and you are no longer in charge.
So, what can be done to repair? This is not about a spate of quick sackings, either of ministers or senior advisers. The political car crash is Kendall’s fault only if you don’t probe the numbers she was handed by the Treasury. But Reeves can’t be sacked for being “bad at the politics” without putting an immediate question mark over the Prime Minister’s future – and, indeed, further spooking the bond markets.
To complicate things further, Starmer’s most obvious successors as prime minister include Wes Streeting, one of whose closest allies in politics is… Rachel Reeves. This is merely to say that if you pull at one string of big ministerial sackings, everything may unravel.
As to Morgan McSweeney, whose head has been called for by numerous backbenchers, it may be that he is trying to do too much at the centre. But behind the scenes, he is by far the most fluent explainer of what this government is for. And in many conversations with him, I have never once heard him utter a disloyal or disrespectful word about any Labour minister. Get rid of Morgan and you might as well ditch Keir too. Anyway, since the main failure was over policy, some insiders say it should be Liz Lloyd, director of policy, to answer questions first about what happened this week.
In the end, relations between Keir Starmer and his MPs are the problem. He must recognise that on his watch, the link between Downing Street and the Parliamentary Labour Party has deteriorated to a disastrous extent. Good, loyal, level-headed Labour MPs simply felt they were never listened to, and often that the Prime Minister had no idea who they were.
That’s insane. The new intake of MPs is probably the most talented the party has enjoyed in modern times. Ministers with experience of the Blair years think that, for experience of the real world, they beat the 1997 generation hands down. MPs who have been treated as a management problem are, in truth, a rich source of advice and help.
Starmer should now appoint a senior figure with cabinet-level authority, somebody with a constituency, not an official, to rebuild relations with his parliamentary party. That needs to involve regular meetings with regional groups and interest groups: and the Prime Minister needs to turn up, if not always then at least regularly.
The events of this week must make a radical cabinet reshuffle likelier later in the year. Prime ministers whose authority has been damaged are more prone to use the levers of dismissal and promotion than those utterly confident in their position.
All that said, and however belatedly, No 10 has listened and given a thoughtful, non-macho response. Labour MPs are being listened to at last. Tory lectures, after gleefully egging on the rebellion while simultaneously denouncing its economic cost, can be shrugged off.
For Labour, all is not lost. What has happened has been a blow to the authority of a Labour government, but a victory for the Labour Party. After this paradoxical but salutary shock “the centre” cannot carry on as before. Embrace the MPs. Listen to the members and celebrate their values. Remember your voters barely notice Westminster dramas and care about NHS waiting lists, crime and the cost of the weekly shop. Even amid the mayhem, do not lose focus.
[See also: Keir Starmer faces war on all fronts]
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