Labour got its Welfare Bill passed on 1 July, but as for the process and the general feeling around what was a shallow victory at best, the word on many lips seems to have been ‘shambles’. This seems totally reasonable to me, as the government have used up a lot of parliamentary time and political capital, getting a bill passed that is now virtually unrecognisable from the original proposals and pretty meaningless.
This whole charade has of course come with potentially major consequences for many people in the North East. We have already seen that if the bill had been passed in its original form, the worst hit region in the country would have been here in the North East.
https://North Eastbylines.co.uk/news/health/disability-cuts-north-east-worst-hit-region-in-britain/
6.2% of the population, in the North East would have been hit, with £400 million lost, not only to the recipients, but also to the local economy. By way of contrast, only 0.21% of people in the South East would have been affected and a mere 0.16% of people living in London.
We should therefore be thankful that at least the bill wasn’t passed in its original form. However, we have still seen the grubby spectacle of a Labour government that doesn’t seem to have any grasp either of the lived reality of many people’s lives in Britain today, or even the heritage and traditions of the party itself.
Kendall has no real answers
This was perhaps best summed up by an exchange between Liz Kendall and a Tory MP, in parliament on the afternoon of 1July. In this exchange a Tory MP asked Kendall why it was that the DWP’s own figures showed that the bill would put an extra 150,000 into poverty. Kendall’s only reply was that the comment showed chutzpah from the Tories, given they had put 900,000 more children into poverty.
This seems to sum up so much of what is wrong with this whole debate and indeed politics as a whole in Britain today.
The Tory MP does indeed have some nerve to criticise anybody regarding the levels of poverty, since the last Tory government effectively imposed poverty on millions of people in the country, through their unnecessary and unwarranted austerity measures. However, it is notable that Kendall has no answers as to why she is prepared to make a desperate situation even worse, with her own cuts and the austerity measures from Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
The political fall out
While the bill might have passed, there can be no doubt that Keir Starmer and his government have come out of the whole sad and sorry episode as very much diminished figures. For Starmer himself, his authority has been badly hit. As has been pointed out, once MPs, especially new MPs, which of course the Labour Party has many of since the election last year, have the taste for rebellion, it becomes much easier for them to do it again. It is perhaps, as if a spell has been broken and suddenly something is possible which didn’t seem to be possible before.
The spectacle has at least shown that this Labour government can be shifted leftwards, when enough of their MPs, who will no doubt say that they didn’t get into politics to attack the living standards of disabled people or plunge yet more children into poverty, come together and put their collective minds to it. Hopefully this is the direction of travel that this so far very disappointing government will take.
Where does Labour go from here?
Labour has undoubtedly wasted 12 long months, chasing Reform voters, many of whom polling suggests are never going to come over to their side.
It was noted in May that according to an analysis by Electoral Calculus it is indeed fair to say that Labour are losing some voters to Reform. But that is nowhere near the whole story.
It has also been noted that, “at the last general election, Labour won the support of 35 out of every 100 people who voted. Since then, three out of those 35 now say they’ll vote for Reform UK. By contrast, two out of 35 say they’ll be voting Green and two out of the 35 say they’ll be voting Lib Dem. That means more former 2024 Labour voters are saying they’ll vote for one of these parties than for Reform”.
Even more worrying for Labour is the news that for Labour, is that they have been so disappointing that six out of the 35 are now saying they don’t plan to vote at all.
At the same time, another poll suggested that the loss of voters to the Lib Dems and greens might be even more serious. It was stated by PoliticsHome that, “more than half of people who voted Labour in July say they are considering switching to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens at the next general election, according to new research shared exclusively with PoliticsHome”.
It was said that polling carried out in May by Thinks Insight & Strategy, had suggested that as many as 52% of 2024 Labour voters said there was ‘some’, good’ or ‘very high’ chance that they would vote for the Lib Dems or Greens at the next election It was also pointed out that, “a significantly smaller portion of Labour’s 2024 vote – 25% – said they were considering Nigel Farage’s Reform UK”.
The Labour Party would surely do well to remember what former leader and Prime Minister Harold Wilson said at the Labour Party conference in 1962, that Labour is a “a moral crusade or it is nothing”. Starmer has said in the past that he thinks Wilson was Labour’s best leader. It is of course notoriously hard to tell just what Starmer really thinks, but one thing is certain; the Labour Party under his leadership is an awful long way from being a moral crusade.
There are many things the government could start to do to improve people’s lives, from devolution of more power, especially to the long-neglected north of England to the nationalisation of the water companies. It would also do well to listen to someone like Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who seems to have a lot more interesting and creative ideas than are ever coming out of Westminster and Whitehall.
And as for dealing with the rise of Reform, Labour could always start addressing people’s real concerns about their lives and the communities they live in, and leave the hard-right nonsense to Farage and Reform.
