After his third U-turn this month, Keir Starmer will hope he has done enough to avoid a humiliating first Commons defeat as prime minister on Tuesday, even if he is now a diminished figure in front of his party and the country.
Over Wednesday night and Thursday, Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and the deputy PM, Angela Rayner, sat down with leading rebels and agreed a series of changes to the government’s welfare bill that ministers hope will be enough to get it over the line.
Those changes are likely to be significant enough to win over the support of dozens of moderates who had signed an amendment that would have put the bill on hold indefinitely. But they have damaged the prime minister’s reputation for embracing tough reforms, and his chancellor’s reputation for fiscal probity.
The health minister Stephen Kinnock said on Friday: “Keir Starmer is a prime minister who doesn’t put change and reform into the too-difficult box. He actually runs towards it and says: ‘Right, how do we fix it?’ And I’m sure that that’s what will be foremost in people’s minds on Tuesday.”
Others in his party disagree, however. “Keir will have to change his approach now,” said one senior Labour MP. “He and his advisers have spent the first year in government riding roughshod over Labour MPs. He’s realised now he can’t do that any more.”
This is the third time the prime minister has reversed course in recent weeks in the face of pressure from outside.
Earlier this month his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced she was undoing most of the cuts to winter fuel payments after a sustained political backlash. Just over a week ago, the prime minister told reporters on the way to the G7 in Canada that he was dropping his opposition to a national inquiry into grooming gangs after one was recommended by Louise Casey.
And on Friday, the Observer published an interview with Starmer in which the prime minister admitted to other regrets too. They included hiring Sue Gray as his chief of staff and warning in a recent speech on immigration that the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers”.
But it is this week’s decision to change key parts of the welfare bill that could prove the most expensive regret of all.
Ministers will now limit their cuts so they only apply to new claimants and have also promised to lift the health element of universal credit in line with inflation. Along with promises to increase spending on back-to-work schemes and to redesign the entire system of personal independence payments (Pips), the Resolution Foundation estimates the entire U-turn could end up costing £3bn.
Reeves will set out the full costs of the package, and how she intends to pay for them, in the budget in the autumn.
But it is not just the cost of the immediate changes that Reeves will have to measure. Now that she and the prime minister have developed a reputation for changing course in the face of backbench resistance, the chancellor is likely to come under heavy pressure over other issues that Labour MPs care deeply about.
Meg Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, said on Friday that the prime minister would now have to listen more carefully to his parliamentary colleagues. “There is huge talent, experience and knowledge in parliament, and it’s important it’s better listened to. And I think that message has landed,” she said.
Top of many Labour MPs’ wishlist is an end to the two-child benefit cap. Starmer agrees on the importance of removing that cap but doing so would cost as much as £3.6bn a year by the end of the parliament.
This is why, as the government’s spending commitments grow, ministers are refusing to rule out tax rises this autumn. As Starmer has found out this week, angering nearly a third of your MPs is a costly business.
