Labour MPs are “seething with anger” about Keir Starmer’s refusal to pledge to scrap the two-child benefit cap, according to Jeremy Corbyn. As Starmer continued to resist pressure from some of his party’s own MPs and others, his predecessor as Labour leader, who now sits as an independent, waded into the row on Tuesday by saying he had spoken to “quite a lot of Labour MPs” about the controversy. “They are seething with anger, particularly as commitments have been made regularly by the party that we would take children out of poverty. Even the Blair government, which Keir Starmer often quotes, did do a great deal to lift children out of poverty by not having a two-child policy,” Corbyn told LBC radio.
Labour may not be able to afford to reverse “lots of bad policies”, a member of the shadow frontbench said as she defended the leadership’s position amid growing discontent. The Conservatives were “waiting” for Labour to commit to uncosted spending commitments, said the shadow culture secretary, Lucy Powell, as Starmer faced potential opposition at a meeting of his shadow cabinet on Tuesday morning. The issue also threatens to become a flashpoint at Labour’s national policy forum (NPF) this weekend, where members and unions feed into the policy drafting process. There is particular unease in Scotland, where the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said he would press a future Labour government to scrap the policy, while other senior party figures publicly broke ranks and suggested they would fight the policy. Starmer’s position was defended in a series of interviews on Tuesday morning by Powell, who told Sky News: “We’ve opposed this policy, this is not a good policy, we’ve opposed it for many years through parliament, but we’re now in a very different economic situation. As a famous phrase would go, there is no money left, the government has absolutely tanked the economy. I don’t know [if] it is dividing the shadow cabinet.” Speaking on Times Radio, Powell said: “We are having to take a long, hard look at what we can absolutely promise to do and so that people can be sure we can afford to do them.” At a bad-tempered meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday, almost every question to the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was about Starmer’s stance on the two-child benefit limit. Some frustrated MPs called it a mistake and urged party leaders to reconsider. The controversy erupted earlier on what was a difficult day for Starmer, with a leftwing regional mayor who has been blocked from being Labour’s candidate for the north-east England mayoralty announcing he was quitting the party to try to run as an independent. Jamie Driscoll said in a statement on Monday that “people are tired of being controlled by Westminster and party HQs” as he hit out at Starmer over broken pledges. The Labour leader faces further challenges to his stance at the NPF, a key meeting that is part of the party manifesto process. Sources said “multiple” amendments to scrap the cap had been tabled to draft policies.