Labour are twisting fight against child poverty into political weapon

The most dreadful message that picture delivered was that Labour’s top priority is scoring political goals over their opponents – particularly the SNP – rather than creating the change they promised would take children out of poverty.

It’s an almost breathtaking display of cynicism but it won’t be the worst we’ll see as the Labour Party turn their sights on destroying the pro-independence majority in Holyrood at the Scottish elections in May 2026.

There is almost nothing this party will not do to reinstate their dominance north of the Border. Ironically these tactics will serve mainly to show why Scottish voters turned away from them in the first place.

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There is surely no need to make the moral case against using a cap on benefits to drive families further into poverty if they dare to have more than two children.

No-one outside the Tory right-wing could seriously argue that is anything but appalling. Indeed, many Labour candidates have argued that it should be scrapped … until they were elected to Westminster and given the chance to do so.

These include Michael Shanks, the Labour MP for Rutherglen, who last year pledged to stand up to Keir Starmer and vote to remove a benefit cap he described as “heinous” yet – along with almost every other Scottish Labour MP – voted to keep it in place. Constituents are queueing up on social media to complain of their new Labour MPs’ similar behaviour.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn (below) was absolutely right to focus on Gordon Brown’s promise to Scottish voters in the Daily Record – you might call it a vow – that supporting Labour at the Westminster election was to take a step closer to eradicating child poverty.

(Image: PA)

Brown, of course, has previous experience climbing atop the moral high ground only to disappear when promise after empty promise is broken. You might wonder why his announcements are given such prominent coverage in our media when none of them have been adopted as policy by those who now lead the party.

Of course, there is no opportunity to properly discuss at Westminster why Labour are allowed to blatantly mislead those whose votes they seek. The Commons Speaker is more interested in upholding arcane rules which forbid MPs to use “props” – in this case, a Daily Record front page – which are obviously more important than leaving families slipping ever deeper into poverty.

After all the meaningless pomp and ceremony surrounding the King’s Speech last week, the sight of Lindsay Hoyle getting all hot and bothered about an MP holding up a newspaper was a surreal reminder that the UK Parliament’s procedures are designed to obscure the failures of what passes for democracy in this country.

Mind you, it’s no surprise that Labour MPs would rather deflect attention from the moral case for the party wielding the whip to save the two-child benefit cap because there isn’t one.

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Starmer would rather bully his MPs to toe his party line to underline the extent of his power. That’s why he felt he had to punish the measly seven Labour MPs who defied the whip in a very public display of pathetic petulance.

He couldn’t bear the embarrassment of seeing those under his control voting not just for another party’s amendment but with the party dedicated to destroying the one thing he holds above all others – the Union.

I used to ask Labour politicians I met if there was anything at all that would ever persuade them to support independence. Most said there was not. I always thought that was a rather odd answer. Surely there must be some overriding point of principle or some dangerous threat to democracy itself that would have made independence the preferable option?

But then I never thought I would see Labour and the Conservatives bury their differences and join forces the way they did in Better Together.

It’S almost impossible to overestimate Labour’s fury at losing Scotland to the SNP. Their hatred of their main political opponent is almost visceral. They see the Westminster election as a sign that they are on the way out of the wilderness and back to dominance.

But there is a danger in seeing politics as just a means to vanquish your opponents that goes much further than an embarrassing photograph that hits entirely the wrong note in the fight against poverty. The biggest risk is that vitally important issues are used as weapons to score political advantage.

Will Starmer (below) be tempted to keep the two-child benefit cap in place until closer to the Scottish election, when its scrapping could be presented as a triumph for Anas Sarwar’s dogged opposition to it (although his recent silence on the issue could make you wonder how determined that opposition actually is)? The naked triumphalism of that photograph on yesterday’s National front page certainly suggests such an assertion is not exactly a long shot.

There are other arguments beginning to emerge that suggest Starmer sees the potential for making the survival of the benefit cap a weapon that can be used against the Scottish Government.

At one time, it would simply not have been credible to suggest that Holyrood has a responsibility to take the money Westminster allows it to spend and use it to mitigate the worst effects of decisions taken south of the Border.

Yet Glasgow South Labour MP Gordon McKee wasted no time trying to push blame in Holyrood’s direction in a recent message to constituents suggesting they write to their MSPs calling for the benefit cap to be scrapped.

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Holyrood has already spent more than £1 billion mitigating Westminster cuts to social security services. In 2023-24, it has been spending up to £84 million mitigating the bedroom tax and a freeze on local housing allowance rates and £6.2m on some mitigation of the benefit cap.

The Scottish Government is right to say it can’t do more without cutting somewhere else. It has no alternative under the current system than to balance its books.

Westminster can literally print money in an emergency. It did so during the 2008 financial crisis when it gave £137bn to the banks. Holyrood doesn’t have that option. Ending child poverty might – rightly – be top priority but it’s not the only priority. Just this week the Accounts Commission warned that community health and social care face “unprecedented pressures” because of funding shortfalls and rising demand.

Labour were, of course, only too easy to pile the blame on the Scottish Government. The Scottish party’s spokesperson on health, Jackie Baillie, warned of the devastating consequences “if the SNP government does not address the mounting pressure”.

oF course, these are problems that come with being in government and governments are quite properly held to account by opposition parties. The SNP were elected not just because of their support and campaigning for independence but also because of their prospectus for running the country.

Obviously, there is a case for protecting the Scottish people from policies they have rejected at the ballot box. The SNP have argued that there is a distinctive political culture north of the Border which requires different policies to reflect that. As a result, students in Scotland pay no tuition fees and NHS prescription charges are free to all.

The problem is that many of these policies and mitigations have been in place for so long that we take them for granted. There are diminishing political gains from these policies while the Scottish Government comes under more pressure to do more and more to mitigate the effects of policies from political opponents who enforced these policies through Westminster in the first place.

It’s a conundrum the SNP need to resolve the closer we get to the Scottish elections and the more their opponents turn the tactics of austerity into weapons against a Scottish Government which is denied the financial ability to run the country AND protect its people against the effects of austerity.

This is important because if the first few days of this Labour government has taught us anything it is that Starmer has absolutely no intention of lifting a finger to combat poverty – unless it helps him win his battle against the SNP.