Keir Starmer faced his first House of Commons grilling as UK prime minister on Wednesday, after suspending seven of his own Labour MPs for opposing a contentious welfare proposal.
Starmer suspended the Labour rebels late Tuesday after they supported a resolution calling for the abolition of the controversial two-child benefit limit imposed by the previous Conservative government.
Their votes to end the cap, which was introduced in 2015 and limits benefits to the first two children born to most families, are an early test of Starmer’s power.
The new UK leader has warned that there is “no silver bullet” for eradicating child poverty, but he has acknowledged the “passion” of MPs who oppose the policy’s continuation.
“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 move to suspend the whip from a group of left-wingers, including former finance spokesperson John McDonnell, was interpreted as a display of brutality by his new administration.
The Labour leader gained office just weeks after his party, which had been in opposition for 14 years, scored a landslide victory in the July 4 national election.
The win follows a four-year effort since he became party leader to return Labour to the political center ground after the hard-left government of former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Under Corbyn, the party’s election results in 2019 were the worst in nearly 100 years.
‘Serious matter’
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”.