Welfare vote: how many will rebel?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s D-Day for Labour’s welfare reforms. MPs will vote tonight on the party’s watered-down benefits cuts. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall formally announced Labour’s climbdown yesterday, telling MPs that the government had ‘listened carefully’ and was bringing in ‘positive changes’. Well, that’s one way of putting it.
Even so, Labour is braced for a rebellion from dozens of MPs. We’ll know the full number at around 7pm, but it is not expected that there will be the 83 required to overturn the government’s majority. On today’s podcast, we take you inside the debate including some of the most notable speeches and what the fallout could be for the government. Can we expect a reshuffle in the near future? Should Keir Starmer watch his back?
Lucy Dunn speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Transcript
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| 0:38.7 | involves risk. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined |
| 0:47.2 | by James Heel and Tim Shipman. Today marks almost exactly a year since Keerstarmour won a landslide |
| 0:52.5 | victory at the general election. |
| 0:57.6 | But it's also shaping up to be one of the most challenging days of his premiership. |
| 1:01.3 | Despite concessions being made on Labor's controversial benefits bill, |
| 1:04.1 | dozens of Labour backbenchers are poised to rebel on this evening's vote. |
| 1:07.9 | James, the government did cave to pressure and made you turns last week, |
| 1:09.6 | but that hasn't satisfied all the rebels. |
| 1:14.6 | Why is that? Well, I think some of the arguments were summed up by the Liberal Democrats speech in the House of Commons this afternoon. We're recording this just after 3 o'clock. We're expecting the vote |
| 1:18.6 | around 7 o'clock. And the Lib Dems, I think, are really useful sort of canary in the mind |
| 1:22.2 | about sort of where the winds of British politics are going. And their speech by Steve Darling was talking about how this was an |
| 1:27.6 | Orwellian measure, was two-tier benefit system in that it would allow people after December 2026 |
| 1:33.5 | to claim a different level of personal independence payments for it. So I think that for some Labour MPs, |
| 1:38.5 | they share that analysis. I also just think fundamentally, as one MP I spoke to this week, just said, |
| 1:42.8 | Europe is the Tories what welfare is to Labour. This is a hugely important issue for the Labour parties, and they're |
| 1:48.0 | very, very concerned about. And there's a really interesting sort of neat history here, |
| 1:51.9 | which I've written about on Coffey House today, which is that, of course, you know, |
... |
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