Liz Truss is facing a second U-turn in her short tenure as Prime Minister

Liz Truss is considering making yet another U-turn, the second in her short tenure as Prime Minister, over benefits uprating. Truss has been warned that she would lose a vote in parliament on delivering a real-terms cut to benefits – a move that could push an extra 450,000 people into poverty. “Benefits have to increase with inflation, we shouldn’t see those on the lowest incomes and with disabilities worse off,” Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan said this morning. She warned the government that the cost-of-living crisis is “not a game” and that while the Tories are in “turmoil”, “people are choosing between heating and eating”.

Following a No 10 source claiming that there could be a “monstrous coalition” made up of the SNP and Labour after the next election, Nicola Sturgeon has said she would prefer a Labour government to a Conservative one. (She did also accuse Keir Starmer’s party of being a “pale imitation” of the Tories.) With Labour’s gains in the polls and the Tories’ nosedive, however, polling currently suggests an outright win for Starmer’s party – without the need for a deal with the SNP. The Labour leader has already ruled out working with Sturgeon’s party, and frontbencher Jon Ashworth yesterday described the claims of a coalition as “complete and utter nonsense and desperate”.

Sam Tarry and Jas Athwal will face off this evening in Ilford South, following a bitter campaign to determine who will be Labour’s next candidate in the seat. Jas Athwal stood for selection as the candidate in 2019, but was suspended from the party the day before the process was due to conclude over complaints of sexual harassment – he was later cleared by the party of wrongdoing. His supported see the events in 2019 as a stitch-up, and after being cleared by the party, Athwal described the complainant as “someone with a political axe to grind”. Tarry described claims of a stitch-up as “farcical”.

Tarry was ‘triggered’ earlier this year; where parliamentary constituencies have a Labour MP, members of the local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) and affiliated organisations vote on whether to hold a full selection process, where the incumbent will have to compete with other challengers, or simply to reselect the MP as the Labour candidate. An electoral college of party and affiliate branches voted 57.5% to 42.5% in favour of holding a full selection process, with all ten party branches voting in favour, in July. Members will now vote on whether Athwal or Tarry will be Labour’s candidate in Ilford South at the next election, in a meeting due to start at 7pm tonight. Stay tuned for updates.