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MPs and the parliamentary process rarely get a good press. Most citizens do not trust either of them much. As a result, the decline of parliament’s role in national life has been a familiar topic for decades. Yet, when push comes to shove, as it has done again this week with Labour’s important backbench revolt against the government’s welfare plans, it turns out that MPs actually matter quite a lot.
By Thursday morning, more than 120 Labour MPs had signalled opposition to the government’s universal credit and personal independence payment bill. With the bill due to be voted on next Tuesday in the House of Commons, and with Labour’s working majority currently standing at 165, that level of rebellion was irresistible. If the bill as it stands had come to a vote, Labour would have lost. This would have been a fundamental humiliation for Sir Keir Starmer, almost a year to the day after Labour was elected.
Speaking to journalists two days earlier, Sir Keir had stuck to his guns. There was a “clear moral case” for the bill’s reforms, he insisted. A day later, he dismissed the revolt as “noises off”. Those responses were tin-eared. Back in the Commons on Thursday, the prime minister had to face reality. He admitted talks were now taking place “to get this right”. They would continue over the coming days, so that MPs “can begin making change together on Tuesday”.
There were claims on Thursday night that a big climbdown was taking shape. That seems inevitable, but it is not yet clear exactly what the changes to be put to MPs on Tuesday will be. The rebels say eligibility for disability benefits is being tightened too fiercely, and that the health related element of universal credit is being cut too hard. But ministers remain publicly committed to pressing on and making savings. Finding enough common ground for concessions that will definitively head off a government defeat is hard, since it involves a fundamental clash of approaches.
Backbench revolts are a feature of modern politics. Yet this confrontation between Labour and its MPs is unusually large by any standards. It is a reminder that big majorities can bring as many headaches as small majorities more obviously do. Above all, it is a reminder that backbench revolts tend to be the visible tip of a larger iceberg of dissatisfaction with a government. Many of the Labour MPs who are challenging the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, over welfare reform would not describe themselves as natural rebels. But their willingness to join a revolt on this major issue should not be dismissed as a one-off. It is likely to represent something broader too.
This is why the complaints about the No 10 operation should be taken seriously. Sir Keir’s staff may or may not be “over-excitable boys”, as some complaints have it, or operate the bunker mentality that is sometimes alleged. The fact is, however, that this revolt was visible long ago, but was not addressed in a professional manner.
The policy was wrong. The opposition to it was broadly based. But the response of Labour’s parliamentary managers and political strategists was hopeless. They did not take MPs seriously enough. In a manner echoing the way Dominic Cummings displayed such disdain for Tory backbenchers after 2019, Labour ministers and staffers seem to have thought that unhappy MPs do not matter. Sir Keir and his team are discovering just how wrong they were. It serves them right.
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