Labour’s big betrayal: This war on the poor will backfire badly – not least among its own MPs

Worryingly for Starmer and Reeves, MPs elected last year are starting to go public with their opposition to welfare cuts, writes John Rentoul – and there are growing numbers prepared to vote against the government. Some believe welfare will be a bigger electoral albatross for the party than tuition fees was for the Lib Dems

The proportion of children in poverty rose in the last full year of the Conservative government, according to the latest figures published this morning. For many Labour MPs, one of the core tests of their government will be getting that figure – 31 per cent, representing 4.5 million children – down.

Instead, they read the dry words of their government’s own impact assessment yesterday: “Using this model, we estimate there will be an additional 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029-30 as a result of modelled changes to social security, compared to the baseline projections.”

No wonder Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, hesitated for longer than was comfortable when asked if his government, not yet nine months old, had been a disappointment.

More worryingly for the Labour leadership, new MPs elected last year are starting to go public with their opposition. Connor Naismith, the MP for Crewe and Nantwich, said yesterday, “I did not come into politics to inflict this on the most vulnerable people in our society, and I cannot vote for changes which will have this impact.”

Many more Labour MPs have expressed their dismay privately, with estimates ranging from 30 to 80 for the number who are prepared to vote against the government.

The phrase “balancing the books on the back of the poorest” has resonated. It was applied first to the cut in foreign aid but now it is applied to those in poverty in the UK. Versions of it made front-page headlines today in The Mirror and The Guardian.

Some MPs even suggest that the welfare cuts could be Labour’s big betrayal, comparable to the Liberal Democrats’ broken promise on tuition fees in 2010. I don’t think they will be, for two reasons. One is that the cuts are defensible and will not necessarily have the effect of increasing poverty, despite the impact assessment. The other is that public opinion broadly supports the view that we are spending too much on social security benefits.

The Resolution Foundation estimates UK child poverty will hit 4.6 million children by the end of this parliament (Alamy/PA)

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, says of the government’s own estimate of an additional 250,000 people in poverty: “I don’t think that is what will happen.”

Actually, she is right. The impact assessment itself says: “There are important limitations to this analysis.” The most important limitation is that it fails to assume that the changes will work.

The point of the changes, according to Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is to encourage and support more people into work, where they will be better off. But the impact assessment’s model is static, assuming simply that people will receive less, or that they will not start to receive what they would have done if the system had not been changed, and that behaviour will not be affected.

There is going to be a great deal of unhappiness in some quarters of the Parliamentary Labour Party over the next few months – the welfare changes will not be voted on in the Commons for some time. MPs will not like being besieged by charities, trade unions and their own members who see the changes as a direct attack on their values.

Reeves, Kendall and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, have done what they can to prepare the ground with Labour MPs. Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, did what he could to try to ensure that as many Blairites as possible were selected as Labour MPs in the first place.

Most of them, by a combination of steely pragmatism and desire for promotion, accept the leadership’s arguments. Welfare spending overall is not being cut; it will grow a little more slowly over the next five years than was previously forecast. Child poverty will probably not increase as a result of these measures, assuming there is the smallest of incentive effects in encouraging people off benefits and into work.

The bottom line is that a government with a working majority of 168 can tolerate a large rebellion without even having to consider the positions of the opposition parties.

It will be difficult at a personal level for some MPs, who feel that they didn’t come into politics either to take tough decisions on welfare or to defend themselves against people on their own side who are passionately opposed to them. But their opponents have to explain why they think that the welfare budget should rise by £5bn a year more than it is already rising.

Labour MPs were warned. Starmer did say that the Budget last year would be “really painful”, and he made it clear that more difficult decisions would have to continue to be made.

They must know that one of the things they “did not come into politics for” was an easy life.