The extraordinary thing about Tuesday’s welfare reform vote is it felt, albeit perhaps just fleetingly, like the fraught and chaotic parliamentary rows about Brexit.Or even the bumpy moments for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.It is extraordinary to say that because the parallel seems absurd: those moments in recent years happened to prime ministers without their own mandate or much of a majority or when engulfed in scandal.But the parallel is this: a government transparently not in control of events, shoved around humiliatingly by parliament.The astonishing thing about this row is Sir Keir Starmer has a mandate and a majority.But not only did swathes of his own MPs desert him, Downing Street was insufficiently nimble to first clock the breadth and depth of their anger and then realise quickly enough the scale of what would be necessary to deal with it.Firstly, there was massive U-turn number one, completed the wrong side of midnight in the early hours of last Friday.The incidental details tell a story at moments like this and the timing of that opening climbdown pointed to the speed with which it had been cobbled together.But here is the thing – the government hoped they had done enough. It quickly became apparent there was a stubborn and sticky group of perhaps about 50 Labour MPs who still would not support the prime minister.Embarrassing, yes, and awkward too, but something they could have probably lived with. But would-be rebels kept telling us the numbers were nudging up.And when the …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnThe extraordinary thing about Tuesday’s welfare reform vote is it felt, albeit perhaps just fleetingly, like the fraught and chaotic parliamentary rows about Brexit.Or even the bumpy moments for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.It is extraordinary to say that because the parallel seems absurd: those moments in recent years happened to prime ministers without their own mandate or much of a majority or when engulfed in scandal.But the parallel is this: a government transparently not in control of events, shoved around humiliatingly by parliament.The astonishing thing about this row is Sir Keir Starmer has a mandate and a majority.But not only did swathes of his own MPs desert him, Downing Street was insufficiently nimble to first clock the breadth and depth of their anger and then realise quickly enough the scale of what would be necessary to deal with it.Firstly, there was massive U-turn number one, completed the wrong side of midnight in the early hours of last Friday.The incidental details tell a story at moments like this and the timing of that opening climbdown pointed to the speed with which it had been cobbled together.But here is the thing – the government hoped they had done enough. It quickly became apparent there was a stubborn and sticky group of perhaps about 50 Labour MPs who still would not support the prime minister.Embarrassing, yes, and awkward too, but something they could have probably lived with. But would-be rebels kept telling us the numbers were nudging up.And when the …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
