Can Burnham avoid another Labour welfare rebellion?

Can Burnham avoid another Labour welfare rebellion?

Any revolt among MPs is likely to be smaller than the one that badly damaged Keir Starmer's government.

Andy Burnham has committed to bringing the welfare bill down, but he knows just how the high the political stakes are.

He saw how last year's welfare rebellion marked the beginning of the end for his predecessor in Downing Street.

Sir Keir Starmer's authority was shredded when 120 - more than a quarter - of his own MPs threatened to derail his reforms.

To defuse this, Sir Keir was compelled to guarantee that existing claimants of personal independence payment (Pip), the main disability benefit in England and Wales, wouldn't lose out.

Even then, 49 of the 120 potential Labour rebels still voted against their own government.

Next week, a review from former New Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn has the capacity to create another internal row in Labour's ranks.

Milburn has spent a year grappling with how to reduce the nearly one million young people who are not in employment, education or training (Neets).

In an interview with the Times, he has now confirmed he is set to recommend cutting benefits for some 16-24 year olds who currently receive Pip, or the enhanced health-related payment of Universal Credit.

Taking benefit cuts to the Parliamentary Labour Party would usually have a similar effect to adding phosphorous to water.

In brief

Andy Burnham has committed to bringing the welfare bill down, but he knows just how the high the political stakes are. Next week, a review from former New Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn has the capacity to create another internal row in Labour's ranks. Taking benefit cuts to the Parliamentary Labour Party would usually have a similar effect to adding phosphorous to water.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to BBC News — Politics. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at BBC News — Politics ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.