The prime minister addressed a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) yesterday evening with a clear message for his natural allies and awkward squad critics alike.
First came his broader, more abstract pitch. Gazing beyond the crowded committee room, Keir Starmer gestured to a world that is “moving quickly”. The prime minister was plain: when the tectonic plates of global politics shift, people rightly expect the government to seize the moment.
He told MPs: “The real world is moving quickly and people look to their government not to be buffeted about by that change — not even to merely respond to it — but to seize it and shape it for the benefit of the British people.”
That, the prime minister added, “is what everything this government does is about.”
He rolled through a rhetorical catalogue of the government’s purported achievements. “That is how we are clearing the asylum backlog at record pace”, Starmer insisted. “Cutting NHS waiting lists four months in a row — even in winter. Wages rising faster than prices.
“It’s about seizing the real challenges in front of us to deliver the security people in this country need.”
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The PM, having deftly navigated the international turmoil of recent weeks, stands in the ascendant for the first time in months. Starmer has won wide, cross-party praise for his performance on the world stage — after excelling in his Oval Office encounter with Donald Trump and marshalling European leaders on Ukraine.
After months of relative drift therefore, Starmer finally has a ready stockpile of political capital.
Foreign policy, it is often said, cannot in and of itself shift the political dial in the government-of-the-day’s favour. But the prime minister’s advisers plainly sense an opportunity. Early indications suggest Starmer’s consummate diplomacy has lightened the public’s appraisal of him — albeit from a dismal low.
So with the local elections on 1 May and the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby now confirmed, the government is honing its political messaging — and steering attention back to the domestic front.
Addressing his MPs yesterday, Starmer reflected on recent geopolitical developments and his own diplomatic prominence.
In this vein, he stressed: “And that is also why, a couple of weeks ago, I announced the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. Not just to do our bit for the security of Europe but to secure the future for working people in this country.
“Our defence and the security of the British people must come first. The extra defence spending I announced last week will rebuild industry across the country. It will support businesses, it will provide good, secure jobs and skills for the next generation. That is what we owe the British people.”
With this passage, the prime minister addressed his first point of intra-party controversy. The government’s announcement that defence spending will be raised to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, foisted on ministers and the parliamentary party by No 10, was nonetheless largely welcomed. But objections arose when MPs confronted the PM’s chosen trade-off. To fund the defence spending hike, the size of the international aid budget will be cut to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI).
This elicited a furious reaction from Anneliese Dodds, the former international development minister, who resigned her post in protest. Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the commons international development committee, has proved another public critic. In a speech delivered to the House last week, she said Starmer was personally setting a “dangerous course” by “taking the axe to our most effective tool for reducing global conflicts and for increasing our own national security.”
But the prime minister’s comments to the PLP yesterday evening serve as the latest indication he remains utterly unapologetic about the move.
This, after all, is the government’s default stance when it comes to the policy fault lines that slice through Labour — and one Starmer will adopt once again when new welfare cuts are announced later this week.
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Addressing MPs yesterday, the prime minister described projected welfare costs to taxpayers of £70 billion a year by 2030 as “unsustainable, indefensible and unfair”.
He said: “We’ve found ourselves in a worst of all worlds situation — with the wrong incentives — discouraging people from working, the taxpayer funding a spiralling bill, £70 billion a year by 2030.
“A wasted generation. 1 in 8 young people not in education, employment or training and the people who really need that safety net [are] still not always getting the dignity they deserve.”
Starmer added: “Whether that’s on welfare, immigration, our public services or our public finances. We can’t just shrug our shoulders and look away. We can’t just tinker around the edges. We won’t try and sow division or create distractions, we’ll roll up our sleeves, take responsibility and make the reforms needed to fix what is broken.”
The comments amount to a pointed preemptive strike as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to announce a £6 billion cut to welfare in her spring statement. The government has already vowed to cut £3 billion over the next three years and is expected to announce billions more in savings from the personal independence payment (PIP), the main disability benefit. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will publish a green paper on sickness and disability benefit reform in the next few days.
It will mark the latest controversial move after a series of controversial moves. The foreign aid cut last month followed the decision to deny Waspi women compensation — that came after the winter fuel payment cut and the plan to maintain the two-child benefit cap (at least for the foreseeable future).
In other words: Labour MPs have swallowed a great deal of uncomfortable government decisions since July last year. These are not the policies, suffice it to say, that the median Labour MP strode into politics and parliament to wave through.
And so consternation is building among the usual suspects. The socialist campaign group — or what remains of it after recent suspensions — is understood to oppose the forthcoming welfare cuts. Outspoken backbenchers Rachel Maskell, Brian Leishman and Neil Duncan-Jordan have also already voiced misgivings.
But at this moment in time, the prime minister’s loyal Starmtroopers have largely drowned out his would-be detractors. A new Labour caucus called the Get Britain Working Group, formed by 2024 intake MP David Pinto-Duschinsky in recent weeks, stands ready to support the government’s welfare cuts.
In an open letter addressed to Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, the group states: “Our Labour values are built on a simple but powerful idea: that every individual, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the support they need to make the most of their lives. Everyone who is capable of working deserves the security, dignity and agency that employment offers.”
The missive, co-signed by 36 Labour MPs, adds: “Of course, there are some people who are not able to work and they must be treated with compassion and respect. But for those that can, we must restore the pathways to opportunity which are currently so sparse for millions of people. It is exactly what a Labour government exists to do.”
As Starmer readies for another showdown with his party, it would seem that a critical mass of Labour MPs — the vast majority — are still willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Intriguingly, we also now recognise the discursive dressing the prime minister will use to sell his welfare cuts politically. The wind of change is blowing, Starmer insists, and the government must not be caught sailing against the mood of the times, or drifting idly by.
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No 10 repeated this rhetoric in its readout of cabinet this afternoon. After “updating [colleagues] on the collision between the two vessels in the North Sea yesterday morning”, the notice relates, “the prime minister then turned to the future of the state…
“He emphasised that recent global events had shown the pace at which the world is changing, and the impact that global insecurity has domestically.
“He said that to deliver security and renewal we must go further and faster to reform the state, to deliver a strong, agile and active state that delivers for working people.
“This included cabinet assessing processes and regulations that play no part in delivering the Plan for Change, and the government taking responsibility for decisions rather than outsourcing them to regulators and bodies as had become the trend under the previous government.”
The readout adds: “The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster [Pat McFadden] added that this government believes in the power of the state to deliver security and stability, but that the previous government took an outdated approach to forever hiring more people and spending more money.”
Starmer first observed that the state requires “nothing less than [a] complete re-wiring” in December 2024, upon the appointment of Sir Chris Wormald as cabinet secretary. Events, both diplomatic and domestic, may well have sharpened the government’s focus since.
Chasing the slipstream of geopolitical developments therefore, Starmer has long passed the point of no return. The final outstanding question is whether the prime minister can take his party with him — or will further Labour MPs be left by the wayside, pontificating progressive objections in his wake?
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Starmer faces first by-election test as MP convicted of assault to stand down
Lunchtime soundbite
‘The Conservative Party has its own procedures on how you join.
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— Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith suggests that the Conservative Party would be willing to accept the defection of Rupert Lowe, who sits as an independent MP after being suspending by Reform UK. Via GB News
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