UK PM Starmer gets watered-down welfare bill passed amid Labour uprising

Despite monolithic majority, Starmer could not get enactment afloat down signature authorities to pare down spending.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has won a cardinal ballot successful Parliament connected a signature plan to overhaul the country’s payment system.

But the 335 to 260 House of Commons triumph connected Tuesday mostly rang hollow, with Starmer forced to soften his promised cuts amid pushback from members of his ain Labour Party, successful what could correspond a situation for his leadership.

“Welfare reform, let’s beryllium honest, is ne'er easy, possibly particularly for Labour governments,” enactment and pensions curate Liz Kendall told Parliament connected Tuesday, acknowledging the enactment infighting that had defined the debate.

Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Milena Veselinovic described the ballot arsenic a “victory successful sanction only” for Starmer.

“His authorities was facing specified a immense rebellion from his ain Labour MPs that determination was nary accidental that helium could walk this measure successful the signifier that it was primitively laid out,” she said.

Starmer had ridden into bureau past twelvemonth connected the backmost of the largest parliamentary bulk successful UK history, presently holding 403 of 650 seats. That majority, helium maintained, would assistance him debar parliamentary dysfunction that had defined the assemblage passim years of Conservative rule.

But Starmer’s signature program to trim down the UK’s ballooning payment strategy soon ran into controversy, peculiarly erstwhile it came to disablement benefits.

Starmer’s program pitched raising the threshold for the benefits by requiring a higher threshold for carnal oregon intelligence disability.

That prompted much than 120 Labour lawmakers to publically accidental they would ballot against the bill. They included Rachael Maskell, 1 of the starring opponents, who called the cuts “Dickensian” and said they “belong to a antithetic epoch and a antithetic party”.

In concessions to enactment members, the authorities backed down connected implementing tougher eligibility rules for the payments until a wider reappraisal of the payment strategy had been completed.

The authorities besides pivoted to lone person the reforms use to aboriginal applicants, and not existent claimants, arsenic they initially sought.

While the authorities had astatine archetypal hoped to prevention 5 cardinal pounds ($6.9bn) a twelvemonth by 2030, the savings nether the caller program is estimated to beryllium person to 2 cardinal pounds.

“This is simply a immense stroke to the authorization of Keir Starmer,” Al Jazeera’s Veselinovic said, “a prime curate who came into powerfulness connected the backmost of a monolithic electoral landslide, who is present incapable to walk what his authorities called flagship authorities without stripping it of astir each its meaning.”

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies