OPINION
Keir Starmer's Welfare Bill fiasco sums up perfectly why Britain is screwed (Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Labour's Welfare Bill and the events which led up to last night's vote describe, to the last inch, why our politics and thus our country is in such a catastrophic mess. The Welfare Bill started out as a reasonable idea but has ended up - as this Labour Party’s bills always will - as a dog’s dinner of U-turns, compromise, ineffectualness and stupidity.
The whole thing has got so complicated it’s hard to know what is actually going on but here’s what I think happened: Keir Starmer’s election manifesto promised to champion the rights of disabled people and put their voices at the heart of all decisions. And to achieve this his party has framed a bill to remove benefits from more than 1m sick and disabled people.
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He appointed Liz Kendal as Work Pensions Secretary because Liz had a history of hating welfare cuts and repeatedly attacking the Tories over the same. So obviously she came out backing the welfare cuts.
Meanwhile Work and Pensions Committee Chair Debbie Abrahams voiced huge concerns about the bill. A bill almost entirely negotiated by, er, Debbie Abrahams.
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Kemi Badenoch’s Tories on the other hand absolutely want welfare cuts - so they are voting against them.
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Sir Keir promised to raise thousands of Brits out of poverty - but some rampant anti-Government propaganda released today showed the bill would thrust 150,000 people into poverty. The anti-Government propaganda was put out by, er, the Government.
And on and on…
It’s a mess. Of course it’s a mess. The relatively sensible Labour Party is always always always held to ransom by the extremists in sheep’s clothing.
Their Union paymasters of course, but also the politicians who still think they are debating in the Jr Common Room - all hifalutin left-wing theory and absolutely no real world politics.
And their virtue comes at a cost - to the poor (and getting poorer) tax payer.
And this is often because Labour MPs, rather more than either of the other parties, actually don’t have much in the way of real world experience. Y’know, a proper job in the private sector, grafting and creating wealth.
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Look at a random sample of the cabinet:
Angela Rayner - council worker and trades union rep;
Lisa Nandy - worked for politicians and charities;
Yvette Cooper - almost entirely in politics since leaving university (except for a two-year stint with a newspaper, and we all know that’s not a proper job);
Ed Miliband - entirely in politics since leaving LSE.
To be fair Starmer ran his legal chambers and Wes Streeting had an unlikely spell at PricewaterhouseCoopers… but there’s not much in the way of captains of industry in there, is there?
Which is why with Labour, more than any other party, economic plans are based on textbook theory rather than real world experience.
And it’s why both this bill (in any useful form) and this party are now dead in the water.
Keir’s sole objective now is to keep his riven party from turning on him and booting him out. Which is why he's ended up caving to his rebels opposed to PIP cuts.
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His critics are already calling him a dead man walking of course, claiming the Welfare Bill farago shows just how comprehensively he has lost his grip on the party.
But kick this one around… who the hell is going to replace him?
We might just need to be careful what we wish for.