Sir Keir Starmer, who spent the election campaign chanting “country first, party second” faces a key test of his mantra on Tuesday. He will need to decide whether to expel serial rebels if they vote against him again on a crunch vote to stop the Winter Fuel Payment going to all but the poorest pensioners.

The seven rebels who defied Starmer on a vote on scrapping the two-child benefit cap during the King’s Speech’s debate in July are being watched like hawks by party managers to see if they will vote against the Government again on Tuesday over the controversial plan to confine the £300 fuel allowance to pensioners on benefits.

According to a government source, the suspended MPs are still expected to vote with the Government or face further sanctions. That could include a nuclear option of expelling them from Labour entirely.

“I will vote against it,” one of the rebels, Labour MP John McDonnell said on Monday. “We’ve had 14 years of austerity I don’t think my community can cope with it any more.”

Party managers are expecting a high number of Labour MPs to abstain on the vote to express their dismay at the plan but to avoid embarrassing the Government, which argues the cut to the benefit is needed to plug a black hole in the public finances.

The MPs who abstain will no doubt be forgiven. Those who vote against Starmer for the first time will probably receive a rap on the knuckles. But for the seven who are already suspended, the stakes are much higher, with expulsion not being ruled out. That’s not without long-term repercussions for the Prime Minister’s authority.

“The problem with going nuclear this early in the Parliament – suspending and expelling MPs – is that it stores up problems for later on,” Professor Philip Cowley of Queen Mary University of London, an expert on parliamentary rebellions, told i.

“The problem isn’t so much those who have been expelled – although they can cause problems – but those who have reluctantly toed the line and feel resentful. Plus, if you’ve gone nuclear over a vote like this, what do you do when things get really serious? The amp doesn’t go up to 11.”

To fail to condemn serial rebels would also throw up questions about Starmer’s authority. So too would a big rebellion among the mainstream of the party. That’s why Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been engaging in a series of........

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