Keir Starmer

I wanted more kids but stopped at 3 financially couldn't afford anymore really and give them a good life. Wish I'd have met you earlier, we could have got a direct debit set up and you could have funded me to have some more. Obviously I'd have needed to move house too I'm sure if we all had a whip round it wouldn't have been a problem though.

 

But that can't work with regards to policy. Might as well just say have as many as you want, tax money will prop you up.

 

I don't know what the answer is, and I get the debate is rather more nuanced that "give them meal vouchers and clothes vouchers" - just that the child should not suffer.

 

Agree that no child should ever suffer. Absolutely.

 

Farage said he did not vote on the 2 child benifit cap because he did not know what to do and called himself stupid. Glad I did not vote for him.

 

Problem is someone keeps having more kids when already struggling the child probably won't see much of the money anyway. Sort the housing crisis and cost of living make childcare more affordable for working families and every thing else follows.

 

I can maybe see that as an argument for scrapping the 2 child benefit for children born in the future if you really want to stop people having kids (which seems silly to me anyway), but applying it to existing children is just cruel and just puts kids into poverty. No two ways about it.

 

Wasn't it scrapped about 8 years ago? I don't want to stop anyone from having kids but like I've said previously you choose to have children they are your responsibility to feed cloth and look after. If you chose to have a big family that is your responsibility. To have 3 or more children most of the time you need a bigger house, car etc aswell.

 

Isn’t the issue that the cost of living has increased so much that people who could fund 3 children are now in desperate straits as their mortgage & bills have shot up at a far quicker rate then their wages?

I would imagine there’s a lot of people with 3 or more children who could afford to support their families a few years back who now struggle to do so.

Are we honestly saying that people should be having conversations like ‘if in the space of two years our gas bills double & our monthly mortgage payments nearly double & our food bill goes up by 50% we won’t be able to support a third child so we better not have one?’

 

We've all heard stories about people who pop kids out for the benefits and live the life of riley without working. There are such cases but they are rare, far rarer than the Mail/Express/Telegraph would have you believe. No child no matter how or why they came into the world should be made to suffer because of their parents' motivation for having them.

This sort of argument will become a thing of the past once Universal Income is introduced.

 

I can see and respect your viewpoint. As I've said numerous times, I didn't vote Labour because it was a super safe seat. If it had been marginal, I would have. Labour are always going to be outsiders unless their is a massive societal pivot and the influencers of power are superceded. So any Labour contender has to find a way to breach that biased vanguard. Starmer managed it, spectacularly, with exceptional assistance from the blue rosettes. They now have power and have to use it wisely, and as we've seen emphatically... 5 years is an incredibly long time in politics.

I do think we are in unchartered waters though. Brexit completely altered the battlefield. I suspect for years Labour benefitted from an old traditional vote that was actually misplaced and Reform are tapping into that. Likewise the tories, who had benefitted from generations of no serious right wing competition.

As for who I would vote for in 5 years time, I'll worry about that in 2029. Til then I hope they can undo some of the disasters of the last 14 years, but we have to be realistic, that's not going to be either easy or swift. The 7 ideological Corbynite's should know that. They got what they asked for and fell into a very obvious SNP trap.

As for the cap itself. Its difficult, because on one hand you don't want children, or anyone frankly to be in poverty. We have a local foodbank which we donate about £200 a month to from our weekly shops and they continue to ask for more as they just can't provide enough. Yet on the flipside, the world is overpopulated and the capital drug of growth is fuelled by more people. The more we consume, move and exist, the more we erode and contaminate the natural world and worsen the building blocks of new life. It will be vastly unpopular and far from libertarian, but the world, somehow has to grasp this huge problem. We have to ask, given people live longer, given medicine is much better than generations ago, do we need to have more than 2 children?

 

Response from one of the 7 Labour MPs who has been suspended, John McDonnell.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...on-child-poverty-two-child-cap-john-mcdonnell

 

As noted earlier in the thread. It's not exactly clear in reporting circles (And even in his own article he doesn't say it either). There is no limit to amounts of Children on Child Benefit (You can have 6 and have child benefit for each of the 6). It's a limit on universal credit and tax credits alongside it that's limited to 2

 

Thanks for your response. You do reply with well argued non-patronising comments.
I agree that people should think carefully about having children. I also agree that the world population is putting more and more stress on the planet's resources.
My reason though for writing the original post was threefold. Firstly, I disagree with the child cap itself. If families are struggling, regardless of whether they 'recklessly' have more than two children in the first place then they need help now, not next year if the extra children are to be fed and clothed properly. Second, I thought the rebellion by the 7 Labour MPs on the amendment was not gesture politics but was a compassionate response to this serious issue based on their socialist, humanitarian principles. The fact that the SNP introduced it partly as a way to embarrass the new Labour administration is irrelevant to me. The response of the 7 Labour MPs was a humane and justified one. Third I was really cross with Starmer's withdrawal of the whip. Totally unnecessary and totally insensitive. He's a Labour politician not a Tory and he surely knows that there are very strong feelings on this. A private ticking off and warning would have sufficed in spite of it being about the Kings speech. But no, he had to look tough in trying to send a message. There'll be other issues down the line for him and he should choose his targets more carefully. Sadly he always seems to think that the stick is always ok rather than thinking 'can I use a carrot?'
That's why I posted (and was quite emotive when I did so)
P.s. I read McConnells response on the Guardian link and agree with him

 

I could see the whip withdrawal biting him further down the line, but at the same time it was an easy decision to flush out the serial antagonists of McDonnell, Long Bailey, Burgon, Byrne and Sultana as a by product. If it hadn't been the Kings Speech, I think they might have let it go, but it was a 3 line whip. They were warned, soft manoeuvres were conducted through the week, communication of the importance of reducing child poverty and the set up of the working group. That and the reminder of the confidence nature and a 3 line whip made many who looked at wanting to state their want for a removal of the cap was enough for them to fall in line and realise now wasn't the time. But those 7 just couldn't help themselves and the outcome was inevitable.

I agree that I don't think it was gesture politics, I'm sure they believe that the cap should go. I also think if a free vote, with budget available, the vast majority, maybe even all, of the parliamentary party would scrap it or reform it, or put in place something more helpful. Its a pity those 7 chose to rebel, so soon, when the intent is clearly there to do something to help when they can. It actually wouldn't surprise me if the budget contains something of a pathway, though it may still be too early.

What I do think though, is given their past, even from comments on election night itself, you could probably have picked 3 or 4 of those names to be the first to test the water at the first opportunity. You could call it conviction, you could call it naivety, you could call it stupidity... Whatever it was, the outcome is as was expected.

I suspect a fringe party will spring up, further fragmenting the centre and left, just at a time where Labour could form a government for a decent period of time. The perfect can never be perfect enough for some political idealogues, let alone the good.

 

I have zero children. So, does not affect me directly.

McDonnell talks a lot of sense. I admire his stance & the other 6 mps. Starmer needs to get them back in the fold with some kind of plan on child poverty, however that is worked out.

Leadership is about being strong & decisive at times, but it also involves listening & taking people with you.

 

I agree with much of this, apart from the fact that I strongly see it as gesture politics on their part, a feeling further strengthened by reading the article that McDonnell wrote in the Guardian. His opening line states that he (and likely all of them) knew exactly what the consequences would be, and chose to do it anyway.

Given the identity of those involved, you can pretty much see the intended end-game they were hoping for. Now that they've safely secured their seats for the next 5 years on the back of Labour's manifesto, they've taken the first opportunity to shed themselves of the whip and free themselves to sit alongside Corbyn in the independent seats as some form of unofficial "Peace and Justice" group (ironically, like reform, this is another private company, rather than an actual political party.

Although, they've technically got a 6 month suspension, with a review after this time, I doubt we'll see any serious attempt by any of them to do much to win the whip back. I suspect that by the end of the Parliament most, if not all of them, will be more formally aligned as a Corbyn group in Parliament under the Peace & Justice banner, and 5 years of financial security is long enough for them not to be too worried about the potential risk to them losing their seats at the next election. Rather than this being any form of principled stand on the issue, I think they've knowingly taken the first opportunity to detach themselves from the Parliamentary PLP and, if it hadn't happened on this matter, they'd have found another one soon enough.

I don't see it as any particular threat to Labour, as the Venn diagram of intersection of voters who support both Starmer's leadership and these particular MPs is infinitely small. Those supporting Starmer's government will be glad to see the back of them, and those who are supporters of this particular group will no doubt be hoping that they now formalise the Corbyn link soon enough and hope that there's a groundswell of other SCG members who they might tempt to follow them across the life of the Parliament.

 

I dont think this group of MPs are any threat to Labour either. They are Labour people themselves through and through remember. I worry that long term Starmer is creating enemies where he should be solidifying Labour support. I think the most likely scenario for the left is for more people to move towards the greens (and not a Corbynite rump) if Labour aren't seen as progressive enough - there are signs that the Greens are starting to break through. Green policies at the election were more 'socialist' than Labour's in some respects and if Starmer doesn't accommodate people on the left but simply alienates them as he did on the vote the other day people will react to it if they feel they're marginalised. That's one reason why I think he made an error in withdrawing the whip. He's created bad feeling when he didn't NEED to. He didn't have to threaten like that on this particular issue. On GB energy, yes. On the housing plans, yes. On the two child cap, no. Its an unnecessary show of strength and insensitivity regardless of it being in the Kings speech. Starmer has a big majority based on tactical voting but one which is deceptively weak given the turnout and share of vote. He should be trying hard to accommodate people on the left who have genuinely decent concerns instead of pushing them away and punishing them. As I said before, the rebellion on the two child cap amendment was actually a decent, humanitarian thing to do. Starmer chose not to see it like that. Its a tactical error by Starmer in my view, not an error by the 7.
I know you'll disagree as will Mr Kaht, and in the big scheme it might not matter politically at the moment because we're early in the parliament. Carry on being 'tough' on dissenters in future though - when he doesn't need to- and Starmer is creating further problems for the party and for potential support in the country later down the line.
Anyway, I've had my say a few times so Ill probably leave things there after this post (unless I'm asked summat specific).
Best wishes to one and all.

 

This is exactly as I see it, but better expressed.