The new divide in Labour

Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were still riding high after their party won a landslide majority. Yet there was a frisson of unease as some of the new flock took the opportunity to raise a grievance: the two-child benefit cap. ‘It’s the first week and they’re already complaining,’ sighed one MP this week.

The unhappiness has been brewing since last summer when Keir Starmer and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said they were in no rush to lift the ‘nasty’ two-child benefit cap, introduced by Theresa May’s government in 2017. The policy, which restricts welfare payments to the first two children in a household, has been widely criticised by Labour frontbenchers as an emblem of Conservative cruelty. Some Labour MPs argue that abolishing the cap would lift 300,000 out of poverty at the cost of £1.7 billion – and that it would be money well spent.