Keir Starmer is in the middle of his first proper row with his party. The Labour leader is not rowing back from his decision to tell Laura Kuenssberg that he wouldn’t reverse the two-child limit on child benefits. In fact, he’s leaning into it, even though he has achieved the incredible feat of uniting Rosie Duffield and Lloyd Russell-Moyle against it (the two backbenchers are normally found disagreeing vehemently on sex and gender). At today’s shadow cabinet meeting, the Labour leader told his top team that they would have to get used to these kinds of uncomfortable decisions because ‘tough choices is not a sound bite’. He insisted that ‘it’s vital to us being able to do what we need to do in government and getting over the line’.
I understand that some shadow cabinet members have spent the afternoon defending their silence to those colleagues
He was backed up by other colleagues, including shadow work and pensions secretary Jon Ashworth, who previously called the two-child limit ‘heinous’.
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