Starmer faces first grilling from MPs after early rebellion

LONDON: Keir Starmer faced his first House of Commons grilling as UK prime minister on Wednesday, after suspending seven of his own Labour MPs for rebelling over a controversial welfare policy.

Starmer suspended the Labour rebels late Tuesday after they backed a motion demanding the removal of the contentious two-child limit on benefits introduced by the previous Conservative government.

Their votes supporting ending the cap -- introduced in 2015 and which restricts payments to the first two children born to most families -- is an early test of Starmer’s authority.

The new UK leader has warned there is “no silver bullet” to ending child poverty but acknowledged the “passion” of MPs who oppose maintaining the policy.

“The last Labour government lifted millions of children out of poverty, something we are very, very proud of,” Starmer said at his first Prime Minister’s Questions as UK leader, referring to ex-premier Gordon Brown who left office in 2010.

“And this government will approach the question with the same vigour with our new taskforce. Already we’ve taken steps,” he added, referring to breakfast clubs in schools and abolishing no-fault evictions for tenants.

Starmer’s decision to suspend the whip from the group of left-wingers, which included former finance spokesman John McDonnell, was seen as a show of ruthlessness from his new administration.

The Labour leader took power just weeks ago after his party, in opposition for 14 years, won a landslide in the July 4 general election.

The victory followed a four-year struggle since he became party leader to shift Labour back to the political centre ground from the hard-left regime of former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The party in 2019 experienced its worst election result in nearly a century under Corbyn.

Despite the question on the two-child cap rebellion, Starmer enjoyed a largely amicable first Prime Minister’s Questions session, with his defeated opponent at the election Rishi Sunak lobbing a series of soft-ball questions at his successor.

“I’m glad in our exchanges so far we have maintained a cross-party consensus on important matters of foreign policy and in that spirit today, I wanted to focus our exchange on Ukraine and national security,” Sunak said.

Late Tuesday, MPs voted 363 to 103 to reject a Scottish National Party (SNP) amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap, giving the government a majority of 260.

However, in addition to the seven who voted with the amendment, more than 40 Labour lawmakers recorded no vote, highlighting the level of unease within the centre-left party at the measure.

The vote tried to force a change to the government’s legislative agenda for the coming months, which it laid out in last week’s King’s Speech.

Kim Johnson, a Labour MP for Liverpool, said she had voted with the government “for unity” but warned “the campaign will continue”.

The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said Labour had “failed its first major test in government” by choosing not to “deliver meaningful change from years of Tory misrule”.

Defending the suspensions, Starmer’s political spokesperson told reporters that defying the government on a King’s Speech was “a serious matter”.