Kill the bill.
If you're a Labour MP the task in front of you tomorrow could not be simpler; kill this bill. It doesn't matter what your motivation is; you know what has to be done.
The oft-heard wisdom is that when you’re in a hole, you should stop digging. It’s unclear how that holds up when the hole in question is a grave. Because that seems like the kind of hole you don’t stop digging until the job is done—until whatever you were digging it for is in the ground and buried.
To almost every observer now, it's obvious what Starmer and Reeves need to do. The Labour government has made a huge mess. They are deep in the hole, and the only way out of this situation is to finish digging.
Then they need to wrap their welfare bill in plastic sheeting and inter it where it belongs—six feet under, never to see the light of day again. Someone needs to kill this thing and they need to bury it, once and for all.
Everyone knows that there is nothing a government hates more than performing a U-turn. But the U-turn is already done.
Everyone already sees it in those terms. So, the alternative to going the whole way and burying this monstrosity is to chop off an arm or a leg and bury that instead—taking both the perception of a humiliating climbdown and all the worst aspects of this stinking, reeking, bin-fire legislation along with it.
Even political babes in the woods wouldn’t be daft enough to suffer the indignity of being seen to have backed down and still bring the object of all that loathing before the Commons. You want to talk about self-defeating?
That should be the textbook definition.
The economic case for this bill is now virtually non-existent. That leaves only the moral case—and there never was a moral case to begin with. The so-called concessions that have been offered amount to little more than a bribe aimed at people who already have the help and support they need under existing provisions. It’s basically saying to them, “We’ve taken care of you—don’t worry about anyone else.”
Imagine putting that argument forward: “Yes, people in the future will lose out. But that’s not your problem, so don’t let it bother you.”
That’s grotesque, isn’t it? That’s almost as immoral as the bill itself.
It adds a further layer of sticky, icky slime to a debate that was already dripping with it. It doesn’t redeem the moral argument at the centre of this—what little of it there ever was. It further poisons the well.
The DWP was wheeled out today to claim that with the “concessions”, only half as many people will be plunged into poverty.
Well, whoopee-doo. Isn’t that a relief? Only 150,000 people will suffer. And that number doesn’t even touch the totality of those who will be impacted in times to come. It’s just the most eye-watering bit, plucked out for spin.
Yesterday, a very brave Labour MP said something that should still be ringing in the ears of every person considering voting for this bill.
Disability is not something most people are born with—it’s something that happens to them. It comes out of nowhere. An accident. An illness. A moment. A confluence of circumstances entirely outside your control.
One day you’re able-bodied. The next, you’re not.
That’s the story for the vast majority of people on the disability register. It happened to them. And if it can happen to them, it can happen to you. You’ll never truly understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of cuts like these until you are. And, literally, that could be any one of us. Any day. Any moment.
Reeves and Starmer and anyone else in this government who wants to keep pushing this rancid bill can talk all they like about “reforming the system” and the “cost of doing nothing.” They can wrap it all up in whatever technocratic babble they want. Most of it goes over the heads of anyone listening.
But a simple truth like “this could be you” ... that cuts through. That lands. People get that. It puts the whole picture in full technicolour.
And there is no fiscal responsibility argument on this Earth strong enough to draw people’s attention away from that fact.
See, if you bury this thing half-finished it’s going to come back to haunt you—and it will haunt you every day between now and the next election. Quite possibly even beyond that. A year, two years from now, the papers will be filled with stories of people who would once have qualified for help, now unable to get support. Those horror stories will be all you read—for weeks at a time.
This government already looks callous and uncaring. It already seems as if it doesn’t listen—that it exists in its own little bubble. Right now, some MPs in its ranks are clinging to the idea that if they say enough times that the concessions mean the government is listening, that will shift the argument. It won’t.
The only way the government demonstrates that it’s listening is to put this thing out of its misery—because that’s what most people want. That’s what most people know to be the right and moral path here. And nothing else will suffice.
At this point, it doesn’t matter why you object to this. If you are a Labour MP, it doesn’t matter if you’re motivated by raw political calculation, if you’ve looked at the opinion polls and seen your seat disappearing in the purple tide of Reform.
It doesn’t matter if you woke up this morning and suddenly realised you cannot, in good conscience, bring yourself to vote for this—or if you held that view from the beginning and were one of the brave few who took a stand.
Your duty and your responsibilities are the same come tomorrow.
You vote no.
You let your leadership, such as it is, worry about how it’s going to get this bill passed. They could reach out to the Tories. They could bring them on board. That would make this stink all the more—but it’s one way to do it. Or they could go down to a humiliating and shocking defeat, one which makes this an existential problem for Starmer and Reeves and a handful of others.
Believe me, many in the Labour movement will not miss them if they’re gone.
But none of that is your problem anyway. Nor should you make it your problem, or your concern.
Because you didn’t dig this hole. You didn’t dig this grave. You were neither the author of this bill, nor among those who decided it should shamble on to its ultimate fate.
This Frankenstein’s monster was not of your creation. So don’t let them make you responsible for it.
The people responsible for it deserve everything they’re going to get. They can either use that hole to end this thing or finish it and stand around wondering what to do with it. Those around you on the Labour benches probably have a pretty good idea what they’d want to see put in it instead.
Because something’s going in there, sooner or later. That grave is going to have this bill, or it’s going to hold a body. And maybe more than one.