Starmer tells rebels to 'read the room' on welfare reform

A frustrated Sir Keir Starmer has told Labour MPs attacking his welfare reforms to ‘read the room’ as he hit back against rebels lining up to vote down the changes next week.

- DAVID MADDOX POLITICAL EDITOR

It came as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner finally broke cover to publicly back Sir Keir’s controversial benefit cuts amid a growing rebellion of Labour MPs that threatens to topple the legislation.

With 122 Labour backbenchers now signed up to support an amendment on Tuesday that would kill the bill, the prime minister went on the attack. Warnings of potential defections and the possibility of the government’s collapse had previously failed.

Speaking at the Nato summit in The Hague, Sir Keir said: “So many people predicted before the election that we hadn’t got the politics right. We wouldn’t win an election after 2019 because we lost so badly. That was the constant charge… I put to me at press conferences like this, and we got a landslide victory.

“Unquestionably, with reading the room and delivering the change the country needs, we’ve got a strong Labour government with huge authority to deliver on our manifesto commitment. So that’s the work that we did, over many years, to win the election. Now we start the work, over many years, to change the country.”