Starmer has completely blown his chance to show change is possible

Keir Starmer’s purge of rebels, it turned out, was not ended by the party’s landslide victory. Its 158-seat majority has not cured him of his insecurity.

From the day it launched its manifesto, Labour’s refusal to commit to lifting the two-child cap seemed like an unforced error.

This pernicious policy, introduced in 2017, affects the life chances of 1.6 million (one in nine) of the UK’s children. Chancellor Rachel Reeves may feel compelled to assuage the doubts of the centre right by stressing the need for financial caution (while hinting at above-inflation pay rises for public sector workers to offset the risk of strikes).

But the cost of child poverty (£39 billion a year, according to the Child Poverty Action Group) far outweighs the cost of abolishing the policy (between £2.5bn and £3.6bn a year).

Sir Keir Starmer and his cabinet

Moreover, the two-child benefit cap is a powerful statement of values. The Tories were wedded to it, not merely, or even principally, because of the savings to the Treasury, but because it contributed to the party’s striver vs skiver rhetoric. It helped present larger families as feckless and to legitimise a discourse that says: “If you can’t afford more children, you shouldn’t have them.”

It deflected attention away from the levels of inequality and precarity which have become the norm in economically-divided Britain.

There have been other stigmatising policies (sanctions, PIP assessments, the hiring of surveillance officers to snoop on “benefit fraudsters”). But the two-child cap is particularly egregious because it makes children bear the burden of their own births.

Tory populism

Scrapping it would not only lift 250,000 of those children out of poverty (15,000 of them in Scotland), it would alter the mood music and represent a step away from the populism of the Tories, in the same way the appointment of James Timpson as Prisons Minister has done.

James Timpson

It would say: “We are not prepared to denigrate the already-marginalised,” and acknowledge that fiscal prudence – aka austerity– may be aimed at reducing the national debt, but it has impoverished society.

Most Labour MPs understand this – they oppose the two-child cap on both practical and ideological grounds. Throughout the campaign, candidates privately expressed their frustration with Starmer’s insistence it would only be reversed when the country “could afford it”.

This frustration is heightened in Scotland where the euphoria over Labour’s upsurge is tempered by the fear it will not hold up in the 2026 Holyrood election, and a recognition that failing to tackle it head-on will provide the SNP with an easy line of attack.

Opponents have criticised SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn’s tabling of the amendment to the King’s Speech as “opportunistic” but this is not really fair. The SNP has fought the policy ever since former Glasgow Central MP Alison Thewliss discovered the awful “rape clause” (the clause that provides an exemption to third and subsequent children born as a result of rape) hidden in the small print.

It was unlikely to be stopped by a change of government.

Nor is it true to suggest the SNP has done nothing to mitigate its impact.

Poverty charities agree the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) – £26.70 for every child under 16 years in families in receipt of universal credit – is having a significant impact on lower income families (although, of course, they would like the party to do more).

It could, for example, redistribute the money it is investing on regressive policies such as the council tax freeze, which disproportionately benefits the better-off.

It could also increase the SCP to £40 a week, as the End Child Poverty Coalition in Scotland has requested. Still, Stephen Gethins, MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, claimed the Scottish Government already spends £140 million a year mitigating the impacts of Westminster’s policies.

SNP reversal?

MOST child poverty campaigners have stopped short of publicly pushing the SNP to unilaterally reverse the two-child cap. In part, this may be because they recognise the SCP costs more than a reversal of the two-child cap would (but ending the SCP would mean smaller families received no extra buffer against austerity).

FM John Swinney

It may also be because they believe that, as a Westminster policy designed to strip people of their dignity, it ought to be reversed at a Westminster level. Labour’s refusal to make it a priority also gives the lie to another pre-election soundbite: that voting for Labour MPs would put Scotland at the heart of government.

For all the high-profile appointments – Zubir Ahmed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Health Secretary West Streeting and Kirsty McNeill as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland – the failure to scrap the policy is an undermining which consolidates the perception of Scottish Labour as a branch office, and turns its newly-minted MPs into cannon fodder.

It is particularly tricky for McNeill, who is the former executive director of policy, advocacy and campaigns at Save the Children.

It was depressing to witness how little fight they had in them. Less than two weeks after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called for Starmer to reverse the policy, and despite his insistence that Scottish Labour MPs would exert an influence over policy, all 37 obeyed the whip and voted with the government.

The following day, on BBC Radio Scotland, East Renfrewshire MP Blair McDougall insisted Scottish Labour’s position was identical to UK Labour’s in defiance of all the pre-election evidence to the contrary.

How his heart must have sunk to hear Pat McFadden,Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, argue that whether or not the cap caused harm was still “open to debate”.

No ploy by PM

STARMER’S resistance to acting on this is a disappointment to all those who reassured themselves his excessive caution was a ploy to ensure his election, and that a landslide would unleash a hidden radicalism.

Instead, he picked a fight over a policy on which there is a broad consensus, and over a vote he knew he would win. To be unable to withstand internal opposition is a sign of weakness, not strength.

Labour’s rebels

That is doubly true when you are on a high and should have the capacity to embrace, even encourage, a diverse range of views. Constructive disagreement fosters better governance, cracking down on differences stifles creativity.

The seven rebel MPs were neither a front nor a threat. Starmer’s decision has exposed a streak of authoritarianism that does not bode well for his leadership or democracy. It suggests he would rather brush the Jiminy Crickets of his party off his shoulder than listen to (and act on) their moral chirruping.

The refusal to scrap the two-child cap also plays straight into the SNP’s hands. Most polls suggest those who continue to support Scottish independence do so not because they think they would be better off, but because they think it might result in a fairer society.

The two-child cap afforded Labour the opportunity to demonstrate such a change was possible within the Union. But Starmer blew it. Now his party appears both apathetic on child poverty and divided, north and south of the Border.

The Scottish electorate has good reason to be disaffected with the SNP. But unless Labour gets its act together on this and its relationship with its Scottish MPs, the Holyrood 2026 leaflets will write themselves: “Labour promised you a reset,” they will say. “It promised you Scotland would be at the heart of the government. It lied.”