It’s day eight of Andy Burnham’s premiership and, bless him, he’s already facing a left-wing revolt. Labour backbenchers are up in arms after their dear leader dared to mention tackling welfare. The new Prime Minister insisted this week that he wants to ‘get really serious’ about slashing the benefits bill. He has, of course, offered no detail on how he intends to do so. But even the merest suggestion of an effort has been enough to send Labour’s lefties into meltdown.
Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson whinged that the appointment of John Healey as Chancellor ‘signals a return to warfare not welfare’. She added: ‘If the new leadership believes it can revive the failed politics of welfare cuts instead of asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share, it will be repeating not only Keir Starmer’s mistakes but fourteen years of Tory austerity. If the first instinct of a new leadership is to target disabled people and low-income families rather than challenge the wealth and inequality at the top of society, then nothing has been learned.’
Joining the chorus of condemnation, John McDonnell declared that welfare ‘must be based upon a strategy of providing positive support to people rather than punitive sanction’.
This steady drumbeat of social media complaints is precisely how the rebellion against Sir Keir Starmer began. If Burnham thinks he can simply flutter his eyelashes and make it all go away, good luck to him. His premiership’s honeymoon benefits may be withdrawn rather sooner than expected.
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