PM KeIr Starmer’s humiliating retreat on Tuesday, over his plans to drastically cut the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) benefits for disabled workers has opened up a deep split in the Labour Party caused by the rebellion of scores of Labour MPs who voted against his bill.
Feeling the heat from their constituents, enraged by Starmer’s and Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ vicious attacks on PIPs, Winter Fuel Payments, and the retention of the hated 2-child benefit cap, the backbenchers mutiny has exposed the chasm between Starmer’s pro-business agenda to save bankrupt British capitalism, and the vast majority of Labour Party members.
Despite frantic attempts by party whips to intimidate the rebels before the vote with threats of deselection they stood firmly by the promises in the 2024 Labour election manifesto in opposing the cuts.
Little wonder there were tears from Reeves as Starmer’s partial concessions were estimated to lose the treasury about £5billion in lost revenue.
A series of about-turns on key policies have sent Reeves’s financial plans into tailspin and shaken any faith in Labour’s competency.
‘That’s what the bond market does not like,’ says Sonja Laud at L&G investment management. ‘The markets can’t trust that what’s been put forward will be put in place.’
Simon French, the chief economist at Panmure Liberum, says the constant flip-flopping on policy is starting to ‘look like ineptitude’.
‘The issue for the Prime Minister is that this ineptitude goes rather deeper than scapegoating one person – even his Chancellor. This looks like a systemic problem within his entire party’, he added.
‘But ultimately, the main thing Labour needs to do, to right public finances and help guard against an unexpected shock, is to grasp the nettle of public spending,’ warned Szu Ping Chan, the economics editor of The Daily Telegraph.
‘A toxic combination of high and rising debt, higher interest rates and the difficulty of imposing spending cuts have led investors to question whether any governments all around the world will be able to meet future debt repayments.
‘Labour’s failure to push through spending cuts means tax rises are almost certain in the autumn. But there is only so much that the economy can bear before it begins to hit growth. There is only so much that markets can bear, too.’
And when markets turn, they turn quickly. With so much global uncertainty, the fates of Reeves and Sir Keir may already be out of their hands. Or, as one Labour MP said, ‘Reeves is toast’.
When it seemed that the vote in parliament might be defeated, with the Tories then also voting against it, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, instructed her party to vote for the cuts, to save Starmer, which indicated that there is already a nascent informal alliance with the Labour government.
The big issue is, however, to bring down the right-wing Labour government from the left before it can reorganise in a coalition government with the Tories, or even with Reform.
When faced with a similar dire economic crisis in 1931 during the Great Depression, the then Labour PM Ramsay MacDonald deserted his party, then in government, to join a national government with the Tories as PM to cut the pay for public sector workers by 10 per cent, to defend British capitalism, for which he was expelled from the Labour Party as a ‘traitor’.
On Thursday, Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South resigned from the Labour Party to join Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-cuts pro-Palestine Independent Alliance because Labour was ‘failing to improve people’s lives’. Anti-cuts Labour MPs must support Corbyn’s socialist policies against Starmer’s right-wing cabal running the Labour government and drive the cabal out.
But the issue of defeating Labour tax increases, welfare and NHS cuts and destitution cannot be won in Parliament, but only by mobilising the trade unions and the working class in a General Strike to form a Workers’ Government and abolish Parliament to establish socialism, with a nationalised economy to provide for the needs of the working class for a decent life for all.
We urge all workers and youth to join the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists without delay to provide the revolutionary leadership to organise the British Socialist Revolution!