Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were still riding high after their party won a landslide majority. Yet there was a frisson of unease as some of the new flock took the opportunity to raise a grievance: the two-child benefit cap. ‘It’s the first week and they’re already complaining,’ sighed one MP this week.
The unhappiness has been brewing since last summer when Keir Starmer and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said they were in no rush to lift the ‘nasty’ two-child benefit cap, introduced by Theresa May’s government in 2017. The policy, which restricts welfare payments to the first two children in a household, has been widely criticised by Labour frontbenchers as an emblem of Conservative cruelty. Some Labour MPs argue that abolishing the cap would lift 300,000 out of poverty at the cost of £1.7 billion – and that it would be money well spent. Reeves’s team has said that they’re open to the idea, but only when there is money to spare. This response is being held up by her supporters as evidence that the party is committed to fiscal responsibility.
‘Our biggest problem won’t be the hard left,’ says one of the 411. ‘It will be the bedwetters’
During the election, most Labour MPs were willing to bite their tongue. Now, more feel able to voice their unhappiness. ‘The majority is big enough that MPs feel they can relax a bit,’ explains a party adviser. Kim Johnson, a backbencher, and John McDonnell, flagbearer of the surviving Corbynite........