Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has hit back at criticism of his plan to keep the two-child benefit cap if his party is elected – maintaining they need to make “tough decisions”.
There has been a growing rift between Labour MPs and the leadership after Sir Keir revealed he would not scrap the Conservative policy that prevents parents claiming child benefits for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
Frustrations spilled over at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the Commons on Monday.
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Sky News’ political correspondent Mhari Aurora heard MP Clive Efford describe it as “a terrible mistake”, while his colleague, Rosie Duffield, said she was “sick to death” of the policy.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – who spoke out against the policy when it was first brought in – also refused to offer her support for Sir Keir’s position when asked about it on Sky News.
But during an interview with former Labour PM Sir Tony Blair today, the current leader stood by his decision, saying: “The stability of our economy is absolutely vital as a stepping stone to getting onto [Labour’s] missions [for government].”
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Referring to a the party “having a row at the moment about tough choices”, Sir Keir told the Future of Britain conference: “We keep saying collectively as a party we have got to take tough decisions and in the abstract everyone says, ‘that’s right Keir’.
“And then we get a tough decision, we have been in one of those in the last few days, and its, ‘well I don’t like that, can we just not make that one, I am sure there is another tough decision somewhere else that we could make’.
“But we have to make the tough decisions. This isn’t some reflection on some focus group that says, ‘we’d like Labour to have an economic straight jacket on’, it is the fundamentals.”
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Pointing to former Tory PM Liz Truss and her disastrous mini-budget that saw the markets spiral in reaction to her fiscal decisions, Sir Keir said: “She proved the thesis that if you make unfunded commitments, the economy is damaged and working people pay the price.
“So if you want proof that unfunded commitments cause economic damage, which is then visited on working people, you have got a living example of that and that can come from both sides of politics.
“So it is a fundamental. I will not let the next Labour government get anywhere near the equivalent of what Liz Truss did.”
