Coffee House Shots
Starmer’s plan to deal with Labour’s hard left
Get three months of the spectator for just three pounds. Go to spectator.co.uk/trial. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shocks, the spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmondson and I'm joined today by Katie Bowles and Isabel Hardman. So three weeks in for the new government and we've had our first Labour rebellion. In a vote last night on the SMP amendment to act the two child benefit cap, seven Labour MPs revolted and have subsequently lost the Labour whip. Katie, who are the seven and how has Starmer's ruthlessness gone down in Westminster? So I think the first thing to know is that the seven are in a way the usual suspects. Obviously this is a new parliament and you could argue there for it's a new awkward squad but I think the new awkward squad looks a lot like the old awkward squad. Effectively, if we go through them, you know you had Zara Sultana who's very much known to one of the more Corbynite tendency MPs and you've got Richard Bergen who served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. You have Rebecca Long Bailey who of course was seen as the potential Corbyn's successor in that leadership contest from Kistama won and then you have John McDonald and a couple of others. So in terms of names, I think if you tried to guess who were the most likely rebels and you would get most of those, of course it's notable that Kim Johnson who was actually pushing for this did not decide to go against. You also have some notable absences in the sense that Rosie Duffield was not there, had Covid, Dan Abbott was away on other business, so potentially it could have been a bit higher. But as Isabel wrote for the evening blend, I think you know initially you had last week, for example, then that's from the Child Poverty Task Force which was clearly designed, yes to achieve its goal, but the timing of which was designed to send a signal to Labour MPs anxious about the plan to keep the two-child benefit cap in place, that thinking was going on this and it's a clear signal that they are likely to scrap it potentially in the autumn. And then yesterday I think as they tried to get the rebellion down, you soon heard Labour MPs ultimately saying they felt they were being threatened and they had the whip removed. Around the time of voting, I was at the speaker's reception and lots of Germans saying is he really going to remove the whip? I think there was a sense of surprise they would go that far. In the end they've removed the whip for six months and then it will be reviewed. I think it's an interesting question, when you look at that list, I don't think kids' stammers in a circle are going to be crying themselves to sleep at night that some of those MPs are currently not Labour MPs. Some of those are the ones I think that you know if they had misbehaved ahead of the election, the party being quite quick to move against and get them out. But there is a question as to, is it an overreaction? Clearly what has happened is suddenly I wrote about it in the magazine last week, speaking to a senior Labour figure was, there was a sense that the first rebellion had to be dealt with carefully and to send a strong signal because it wasn't so much that this amendment had any chance of passing. But how Kirstama responds to backbench pressure is clearly going to be a theme for the entire Parliament. And therefore I think there's a view that in the first year or two you cannot do anything that can look like a symbolic win to the left of the party for what it would send. And that's perhaps why you have what I think is most of a degree no matter where you sit quite an extreme reaction to a pretty light rebellion. What would have happened if it was 60 Labour MPs who had voted for this amendment? I think, you know, seven MPs and ones that you don't particularly want to give jobs to find that's one thing. I think the question is, do you end up in a situation now where yes, new BMPs, they've seen how you're meant to behave in this party. But could there be an issue later down the line, which is a bigger rebellion? And then it's a much more serious thing to say, oh, we're going to remove the whip, you know, double figures plus. Isabel, what do you make of that? Has he set a bit of a dangerous president here? I mean, they've definitely adopted the strategy that a lot of teachers at the start of secondary school adopt where they just scream at you to scare the bejesus out of you and try and get some discipline. And maybe in later years, they start to actually treat students with with sort of a little bit more respect and humour. And you can totally understand why they've done that because if you look back to 97, when Tony Blair came in with a big majority and still a rump of a hard left left wing MPs, there was a very indulgent strategy from the whips towards those MPs, which was basically in it. We've got a big majority. We'll just let Jeremy Corbyn et al vote as they please, you know, they would ring up very politely and say, oh, just checking your voting against us tonight. And these guys became a sort of permer rump of rebels, permer rebels. And I think Starmer's not draw a direct line from that sort of indulgence to the left them flourishing in opposition and Corbyn becoming leader because they were never really dealt with. And the whole strategy of Martin McSweeney and Starmer has been to deal with these guys one way or two other. The question is, is whether this is going to, I mean, I certainly think that this benefits both sides. You've got Starmer dealing with the hard left, you've got the hard left being martyrs on something, which they will benefit from baking milk. And actually, they can also get a great deal of applause from their side when, as we know he will, Starmer reverses the policy on the cap and scraps it. It appears he and Rachel used to be clear. They don't like the cap. They just can't afford to scrap it out at the moment. And so the standoff last night was not on a big point of principle or these guys rebelling against Starmer's vision, but for the country, it was rebelling over trusting Starmer's timescale. Now, that's obviously not how they'll sell it to their supporters, not how the SMP are selling it, but that is what it was about. And so when he does reverse this policy and say, oh, we've found three billion pounds, we can now afford to drop this. By the way, the public think we should keep it. I think it's 67% of voters think that the cap should remain, but it's an emotional issue for lots of Labour MPs who did vote with the government last night. Then the hard left can say, oh, we were right all along. And look, we had to suffer to get this to happen. Now, that, you know, that that's not what happened. But you can see these alternatives are rising. So I think it has, it's probably helped both sides to a certain extent. And I just wonder, you know, it is a step up. It's a nuclear option or was previously a nuclear option when it came to whipping. Even on big issues previously, rebels in both parties would be punished in more administrative ways. So they'd be put on a series of 8.15 AM delegated legislation committee. Now, 8.15 AM is basically the middle of the night in parliamentary terms, because people don't turn, tend to turn up until about 11 in Westminster, and then they go late. So that's one way of punishing them. It's also saying, well, you can't, we're not going to slip you. We're not going to let you go on an overseas trip. So suddenly you're fascinating select committee trip to the south coast of France in the summer. For instance, you can't go on. So that was the kind of normal way of dealing with somebody who'd rebelled. And this was a nuclear option. Remember when Boris Johnson stripped the whip of a load of Tory anti Brexit rebels back in 2019. I mean, it sent shockwaves to Westminster. So this is a big shift. And does it mean you have to do this all the time now? Is this just the equivalent of, you know, balling out the naughty kid on the first day of school, and then going to a more reasonable disciplinary regime? Or are you just going to be suspending a hell of a lot of people over the next few months? I don't know, but I'm not sure this is straightforward, because it's not a straightforward issue. I think it would be unsustainable to have this level of discipline on now, it might be because it is a king's speech. But you, you know, if it came across various amendments and spread out, you know, it is an uncertain willing to do, I can see them having quite tight control because of the size of the majority. But we have seen, you know, bad will does get stalled up. And I think what's interesting is the seven MPs who have lost the whip. Again, I'm doing this too much crying and cornflakes amongst some, but, but across the Labour Party, there are MPs who question the treatment of them, you know, if you take away the personalities. Yeah, but do you think this is just an occupational hazard of having such a big majority? I remember a piece that you wrote in the run up to the election about how in this super majority scenario, Labour effectively becomes government and opposition. Is that what we're seeing? I think it is, which is why obviously they had to be particularly careful about how you deal with your first rebellion because you look at the numbers. And also you look at the fact that the Tories aren't even going to have a leader opposition until November, clearly more opposition and more relevant opposition is probably coming from within the Labour Party. Now, the majority is so big. You can argue, oh, he's going to be able to do whatever you want. But lots of people said that Boris Johnson. So there's definitely an element of that. And I think this is clearly an effort to say, no, when John McDonnell has gone around saying, guys, this amendment actually were helping his starmer because we're giving him the cover to move, which was the message from coming some of these rebels to new MPs, new MPs bringing this up in the parliamentary Labour Party meetings and talking about how they felt they'd been put in an impossible situation. I think this is an attempt to, you know, say, actually, no, this is how we're going to behave. But clearly, as Isabelle says, there's a question of how you sustain that, because there's going to mean a bigger screw which is coming up the track. And Isabelle, just finally, the other news is that we've had the first person to announce their candidacy for leader of the Conservative Party in James Cleverley. Surely no surprises there. No. And he said that yesterday that there was a reasonable chance that he was going to stand, which I think is exactly the phrase that Mel Stryde has always has also used. So I think, so I've been watching him in the comments over the past couple of days because he had to respond to a statement by Yvette Cooper on Monday. And then yesterday he and Cooper were sparring in the Home Affairs debate section on the King's speech. And it's really interesting that the stance that Cleverley is is taping, which is basically to be very, very combative, to accuse Yvette Cooper of disrespecting African countries, to sort of lay down markers about illegal immigration, and also, and this is something that Rishi Sunak is trying to do rather more planatively, and I suspect we'll hear some of this again at PMQ's, to try to defend the record of the Conservatives. So we've, you know, we spent most of this podcast talking about amendments to the King's speech. Now, none of the ones that were of interest came from the official opposition. There was an amendment from the official opposition, which was this really plaintiff, needy one, calling on the house to recognise that the economy was growing when this government took over. And basically trying to combat the narrative that every Labour minister is now pushing or that there's asked of the last 14 years, as they call it. And, you know, things being much worse than we expected when we got into our departments and sort of, you know, melodramatic horror. And that's where the sort of Sunak Cleverley line of thinking is, is that they have to push back against this Labour narrative, and Cleverley is, you know, he's a much more combative politician than Sunak ever was. And I think when Sunak has tried to be combative, he's often just looked like he's had too much coffee, whereas Cleverley really enjoys it. And I think he's often quite, you know, quite good at it. So that will be his style of leadership. But, you know, there's this whole debate within the party about where the party needs to go and where it needs to swing. And I don't think that's a question he's necessarily answered yet. I think there's interesting polling of the general public on the Tory candidates for a month or so ago, which had James Cleverley out in front. But of course, what matters most right now in terms of electorates is MPs and then the membership. And he is not ahead with the membership. I do think that his pitch of being a unifier does appeal to some in the party. And probably his main competition when it comes to this MP nominations in terms of the shape of the party is going to be Tom Teigenhat. I don't think James Cleverley is particularly left-wing, but he also is someone who doesn't support leaving the ECHR. And that is going to be a dividing line in this contest. So I think he is probably dipping in the pool of one nation MPs, some centrist, some former ministers, perhaps some Cameroon's. And then that means you're going up against figures like Teigenhat. And the battle probably for the right of the party and those MP nominations is going to be much more Robert Genrech, potentially Cammie Badernock, Cammie Bader also trying to get some centre MPs. But therefore, I would be very surprised with both Tom Teigenhat and James Cleverley within the final two and potentially a struggle for them both to get in the final fall. Well, thank you, Katie, thank you, Isabelle, and thank you very much for listening. And if you do enjoy the podcast and you listen on Apple podcasts, please give us a follow. But if you're on Spotify, if you could leave us a rate and review, that would be much appreciated. [Music]