Sir Keir Starmer will this week try to face down a revolt from the Labour Left over his ‘Trumpian’ plan to take an axe to the bloated British state.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are leading opposition to departmental spending cuts as part of a wider package which could include up to £6 billion being sliced from the welfare budget.
The Prime Minister has been told that he could face frontbench resignations, with friends of Mr Miliband warning that even he ‘would walk’ if the £8 billion budget for his beloved GB Energy renewable energy investment body is targeted by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
MPs on the Right of the party hit back yesterday by saying they would welcome such a move – because the former leader is ‘associated with failure’ and ‘plays badly in the Red Wall seats’. However, last night there were claims that Mr Miliband had ‘seen off’ dramatic cuts to his budget amid fears that his resignation now would be too damaging to the Government.
The threat of massive reductions in the welfare bill and deep cuts in other government spending has plunged the Labour movement into turmoil barely seven months into Sir Keir’s administration.
In a stormy Cabinet meeting last week, Ms Rayner and Mr Miliband were joined by other ministers including Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Commons Leader Lucy Powell in forcibly objecting to planned cuts of up to 11 per cent in so-called ‘unprotected’ departments such as environment, local government and justice.
However, the prospect of Ms Reeves taking an axe to budgets or raising taxes in her spring statement later this month only appeared to increase yesterday with the news that the economy had unexpectedly contracted by 0.1 per cent in January.
And one Cabinet ally of Sir Keir said that the PM had been ’emboldened’ by Donald Trump’s swift public sector reforms, including savage cuts to the US federal workforce under the oversight of Tesla and X boss Elon Musk.
Sir Keir Starmer will this week try to face down a revolt from the Labour Left over his ‘Trumpian’ plan to take an axe to the bloated British state
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner (pictured) and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are leading opposition to departmental spending cuts as part of a wider package which could include up to £6 billion being sliced from the welfare budget
In a stormy Cabinet meeting last week, Ms Rayner (right) and Mr Miliband (left) were joined by other ministers including Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Commons Leader Lucy Powell in forcibly objecting to planned cuts
Last week, Sir Keir appeared to prove that with his out-of-the-blue announcement that he was abolishing the giant quango NHS England, to the shock of its 14,000 staff.
The minister said: ‘You won’t see Keir appearing onstage with a chainsaw, like Musk did. But there is no doubt that we feel emboldened by the pace and extent of change in Washington.’
Details of potentially huge cuts to the welfare system – whose spending Sir Keir has described as ‘unsustainable’ and ‘indefensible’ – are due to be unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall later this week. Ministers are planning to make it harder for people to qualify for personal independence payments.
The cost of the beneft, designed to help with the living costs of those with physical or mental health conditions or disabilities, has doubled in half a decade.
In a sign of fury on Labour’s Left, veteran MP Diane Abbott angrily complained last week that she and other colleagues were unable to challenge Sir Keir at a meeting on the issue last week because they were told the event was full.
In an apparent swipe at Sir Keir, she added: ‘Keen on dissent in other countries – not so much here.’
Yesterday she posted on social media that it would be ‘good’ if frontbenchers quit over plans to freeze some disability benefits, saying: ‘If anyone in Labour came into politics to cut welfare, they joined the wrong party.’
A fellow Labour veteran MP said: ‘They can shut Diane out of a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting but they can’t shut the Labour rank and file out of this.
In a sign of fury on Labour’s Left, veteran MP Diane Abbott (pictured) angrily complained last week that she and other colleagues were unable to challenge Sir Keir at a meeting on the issue last week because they were told the event was full
However, writing in The Mail on Sunday, former Labour Cabinet minister David Blunkett (pictured) made clear that cutting the benefits bill and getting people back into work ‘could not come a moment too soon’
‘If the cuts are on the scale they’re talking about, there’s no way Starmer will silence the Party. There will be a huge revolt on the Left.’
However, writing in The Mail on Sunday, former Labour Cabinet minister David Blunkett made clear that cutting the benefits bill and getting people back into work ‘could not come a moment too soon’.
In his article, he writes that ‘the doubters in my party must see that we cannot help those who need support the most and continue to find billions of pounds in additional welfare payments at the same time. The two things are incompatible.’
He added: ‘That so many of our youth are deemed to be completely inactive is a generational timebomb that stores all sorts of social ills for decades to come.’
Separately, one Labour MP predicted last night that despite the increasing marginalisation of Mr Miliband’s Net Zero green agenda, the former party leader would stay in post because ‘he enjoys his Red Box and official car too much’.
The MP said: ‘It’s about time Ed did something and made a stand but he won’t go.’
However, the MP warned that whatever Sir Keir thought, the team around the PM ‘hate Ed Miliband’, especially Peter Mandelson, now Britain’s ambassador to the US. They added: ‘Ed represents to Keir’s team all the woke issues that they don’t like. And they think he is synonymous with defeat.
‘Plenty of people in No 10 would be happy for Ed to go because they don’t think all this green stuff is working in the Red Wall seats.’
