Welfare vote: ‘Here are the failures it reveals – and three faint silver linings’

“Change isn’t easy, we’ve always known that,” a Number 10 source said just after Tuesday’s climactic welfare vote.

You can say that again.

MPs were totally united, but only in dismay

“Omnishambles.” “Crazy, man.” “Describing it as chaos now feels like an understatement.”

Just a few of the snap verdicts from MPs across parties on the government’s second welfare climbdown, carried out in the unholiest of fashions in the middle of the debate itself – with fresh concessions unveiled at the last possible minute just before MPs voted, and just hours after Liz Kendall had suggested otherwise.

The government did finally manage to unite MPs on Tuesday night, from across select committees, across factions and across parties, but just not in the way it wanted. There was near-universal disbelief at the handling of the welfare bill in recent hours, days, weeks and months.

Failures on multiple fronts give critics a field day one year into power

The welfare reform bill has obviously been a hugely painful experience and lesson on not just one but multiple fronts for Labour – which a lot of political and media attention has focused on to date, and will keep focusing on in the coming days when ministers would rather be highlighting first-year triumphs.

There are the failures to  listen. Failures in relationships between backbenchers, select committee chairs, Number 10 and whips. Failures to involve disabled people themselves more in policy. Failures of messaging in focusing on cost-cutting, and other aspects of government communication around reforms.. Big questions are surfacing again about overall competence.

Then there’s the saga’s toll on the authority and reputation of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall – not to mention Reeves’ now-even-tighter fiscal straightjacket.

Internally, the row hasn’t just dismayed the many members and prominent voices on the left, soft left and beyond who oppose the plans.

Whips will fear rebels have now crossed the rebellion Rubicon. Many on the party’s moderate and right flanks will be aghast too at the damage the public row itself risks to the image the party leadership spent years cultivating in opposition – of a united, professionally run operation that puts “country first, party second” after the in-fighting of the Jeremy Corbyn era.

But – the vote debunks the idea ‘all MPs are the same’

All those concerns are natural. But on the flipside, there are aspects of the row at least some in Labour might celebrate, even if those won’t get as much media attention  – and everyone would rather we hadn’t got here in the first place.

There is obviously the fact that for now at least, many vulnerable people won’t be denied benefits in years to come in the way they looked destined to only last week.

But beyond that, the vote does help debunk two common public criticisms often levelled at MPs and parties – the idea all politicians are the same, and the idea they are too tribal. Here were Labour MPs of many stripes showing they are not.

Of course, pollsters do understandably warn Labour “needs to avoid adding division to public disappointment”, arguing division was what did for the Tories. 

But some, notably including Andy Burnham, argue division isn’t necessarily electorally toxic.  Burnham, who like Emma Lewell today is scarred by the reputation damage of his 2015 welfare vote, said MPs having the chance to air their true views more helps “raise the esteem of parliamentary politics”.

“In the social media age, people want to see people being true to themselves,” he told me in a recent interview. It’s an interesting point, even if his conclusion – that we scrap the whip altogether – will strike many as unworkable.

The vote shows liberal democratic politics at work

Another common perception the vote arguably debunks is the idea is the idea politics doesn’t change anything – or that there’s no point campaigning for anything as politicians are too ideological/tribal/self-interested/powerful/**** to listen.

Of course the countless positive and under-appreciated Labour policies being enacted every week are the ideal-world advert to voters of liberal democratic politics working – but the vote is an example too of it working even when the government doesn’t want it to.

The government’s huge concessions are a reminder too to voters that a parliament full of individuals they had the chance to vote for, not the government of the day, is sovereign. It shows the impact having many Labour MPs in the Commons, and a government reliant upon their votes, truly makes.

It shows concerted campaigns  and parliamentary pressure can work to push a government in a more sensible or progressive direction, in a way hard to imagine not only under the Tories, but also arguably in the pre-election era when the talk was of uber-loyal “Starmtroopers” controversially winning virtually all selections.

READ MORE: ‘So much for new Labour MPs being ultra-loyal Starmtroopers’

The media treats U-turns as the worst of all worlds, but some experts in public opinion disagree – suggesting the public are far more concerned what policy actually is in the end, than they are the circuitous route a party takes to get there.

Most members would probably rather a government that caves, albeit far too late in the day, to unprecedented pressure from almost a third of its MPs than one that totally ignores it – and some voters will agree.

The vote shows progressives Labour is a broach church

Some voters and activists on the progressive left beyond Labour, as well as more left-wing Labour supporters and tens of thousands of ex-supporters who have drifted away in recent years, will take heart from the fact more than 100 MPs were prepared to push their own government so hard for a progressive cause.

With our reader survey and so much else suggesting significant discontent with the government, here is a clear reminder for disiillusioned progressives of the fire in the bellies of many MPs, and not just on the radical left.

Is the damage done, or could some of those members and ex-members now be marginally more inclined to get involved and campaign or speak up for the party in future?

Either for particular MPs, or – more optimistically – for a party that’s reminded them Labour is still, as ever, a broad church – and that Labour views and values go well beyond the current stances of the current government of the day. There is a little more to socialism than what a Labour government does.

Overall, it’s hard to argue the government’s handling of the welfare bill has been anything but a disaster – but there are at least those three faintest of silver linings. Perhaps.

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