Starmer urged to bring back Left-wing rebels or face leadership ‘doom’
Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to reinstate Left-wing Labour rebels or his leadership will be “doomed”.
A total of seven MPs were stripped of the whip last July for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
They were set to have their six-month suspension reviewed on Thursday but the whips have refused to comment on their fate – raising the prospect that Sir Keir will seek to keep them as independent MPs to neutralise their power to rebel.
One Left-wing MP told The Telegraph: “We think [the] Labour leadership will pay a price in electoral terms by freezing out the Left and that his leadership is doomed unless he changes direction.”
The suspended MPs include John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn’s former shadow chancellor, and Rebecca Long-Bailey, who was also a prominent figure in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
The others are Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana, Ian Byrne, Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain.
Mr Hussain had quit Sir Keir’s frontbench the previous year over a Gaza ceasefire vote.
One of the MPs told The Telegraph they had still not heard from the whips on Tuesday, just 48 hours before their suspension was due to be reviewed.
Tensions with the Labour Left have been a dominant theme of Sir Keir’s tenure since he took over from Mr Corbyn, who was later expelled from the party.
He was accused of attempting to “cull” Left-wing candidates ahead of the election and provoked a backlash for taking a zero-tolerance approach to the seven rebels last year.
Diane Abbott, a veteran Left-winger and close ally of Mr Corbyn, said she was “horrified” by the suspensions.
Sir Keir has been warned that he risks dooming his leadership if he insists on “freezing out the Left”.
The source said it was time their colleagues got the whip back, pointing out that if the leadership wanted “to have them out for longer, they should have said so at the time”.
Asked about a potential backlash, they said the Left were “broadly reconciled to further disciplinary actions”.
Another Left-wing MP said their colleagues should never have been kicked out of the party in the first place.
“I’m of a firm view that those Labour MPs should never have lost the whip, and therefore it’s crucial that they do get the whip returned,” they said.
“They are serving their constituents faithfully, and nobody should fear speaking truth to power when raising deep concerns.
“We need to be able to do that, and it’s good for government to have good, sound policy. So, yeah, I believe the whip should be returned.”
Sir Keir’s decision to retain the “cruel” two-child benefit cap has proved a deeply contentious issue within the party, with the Government’s child poverty taskforce currently reviewing the policy after pressure from the Left.
Campaigners have argued the change would be the single most cost-effective way of curbing child poverty in the UK.
The two-child limit was introduced by Lord Cameron but did not come into effect until 2017, by which time Theresa May was prime minister.
It prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for their third and any subsequent children.
Sir Keir said on multiple occasions during the election campaign that his government would not scrap the cap because of the economic implications.
He stood firm on it when he entered No 10, with no mention of the policy in the King’s Speech, which set out the legislative agenda for the coming year.
But in the wake of the early rebellion from Left-wing MPs, the Government said all levers to address child poverty were under consideration.