Protest has made Starmer U-turn on disability benefits; but we have to keep the pressure on, argues Steph Pike

For three days. Starmer remained intransigent in the face of an overwhelming rebellion by over 120 Labour MPs. He insisted that the vote on the disability benefit cuts would go ahead on Tuesday and dismissed the concerns of an unprecedented number of his own MPs as ‘noises off’. As a consequence Starmer faced certain defeat unless he agreed to Tory demands that would have made his government even more unpopular. He was therefore forced into yet another humiliating U-turn.

The scale of the rebellion by Labour MPs is unprecedented in the first year of a new government. That over 120 MPs were prepared publicly to express their concerns by signing their names to an amendment that would kill the government’s disability cuts, one of Starmer’s flagship policies, demonstrates not just their deep unease at the cuts to benefits, but more worryingly for Starmer, a growing sense of dissatisfaction with his leadership. Starmer’s U-turn is a victory for the protest movement led by DPAC, and including the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, that has campaigned relentlessly against these brutal cuts. The final straw for Starmer was the rebellion of the 120+ Labour MPs, but there is no doubt that without the protest movement, many of those MPs would not have had the confidence to make the stand that they did. The protest movement also hardened the public’s opposition to Starmer’s benefit cuts.

Even though this is a victory, the concessions that Starmer has made are pitiful and begrudging. They are the concessions not of a man who has listened and realised the mistake he has made but of a man doing the bare minimum to save his own political skin. Starmer’s ‘concessions’ will create a two-tier system where the brutal cuts to Pip will apply only to new claimants, not to people currently receiving Pip. Starmer has also said that the health-related payment in UC will no longer be frozen. However, it will still be halved for new claimants and the abolition of the work capability assessment will leave disabled people forced to look for work they are not well enough to do and make them more vulnerable to being sanctioned.

DPAC and other disability groups are rightly condemning Starmer’s concessions as totally inadequate. The campaign must be stepped up to demand that the cuts to disability benefits are completely abandoned. We must put pressure on Starmer and all the Labour MPs to kill these brutal cuts once and for all.

Although Starmer’s U-turn wasn’t anything near what is needed, he has been left seriously weakened. From his appalling stance on Gaza, his attacks on our right to protest, including his repressive move to ban Palestine Action, to his continuation of austerity, his courting of the far right with his ‘island of strangers’ speech and his sabre-rattling militarism, Starmer is showing himself to be increasingly out of step not only with public opinion but with his own MPs. Politically, he is a dead man walking. It is time to finish him off.

Join the demonstrations against the benefit cuts on Mon 30 June 30 and Tues 1 July.

Let’s keep the pressure on!

No Disability Benefit Cuts! Welfare not Warfare!