Kemi Badenoch has offered to rescue Sir Keir Starmer from his own Labour backbenchers after a massive rebellion threatened to bring down his welfare reforms.
In a late intervention on Tuesday evening, the Tory leader stepped in to say her party would back the swingeing cuts to benefits, as more than 100 Labour MPs were gearing up to reject the plans when they are voted on next week.
It came after the defiant PM hit back at Labour rebels, warning that “those who care about a future welfare system” must support the legislation.
And with question marks about whether he could survive a potential defeat, Sir Keir also insisted on Sky News that it is “not a confidence vote”.
However, warnings have already been made by critics in Labour and the trade unions that it would be “shameful” of him to rely on Tory votes next Tuesday to get the legislation needed to slash benefits passed.
MPs are set to vote on the reforms next Tuesday, which are expected to save the Treasury £5bn a year in savings, mostly by reducing personal independence payments (PIPs) for those with disabilities.
So far, 108 Labour backbenchers have signed a reasoned amendment to kill the bill, with organisers of the rebellion privately admitting to surprise at the number of MPs who have backed it.
As many as 12 ministers are understood to be considering rebelling against the legislation, while 108 Labour MPs have signed a new amendment which would stop the bill in its tracks.
Capitalising on the political chaos for the government, Ms Badenoch has appeared to have calculated that it would be more humiliating for the prime minister to need her to pass an essential bill.
In an offer to Sir Keir, she said: “The government is in a mess, their MPs are in open rebellion. If Keir Starmer wants our support, he needs to meet three conditions that align with our core Conservative principles.
“The first condition is that the welfare budget is too high, it needs to come down. This bill does not do that. The second condition is that we need to get people back into work. Unemployment is rising, jobs are disappearing, and even the government’s own impact assessments say that the package in this bill will not get people back to work.
“The third is that we want to see no new tax rises in the autumn. We can’t have new tax rises to pay for the increases in welfare and other government spending.”
She insisted that her party was “acting in the national interest”.
But Steve Wright, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, said: “It’s possible that Keir Starmer will be dependent on the Commons votes of Tory MPs to pass this new wave of austerity for the most vulnerable. That’s a shameful thing for any Labour prime minister to do.”
The row came as health secretary Wes Streeting was described as having gone “into overdrive” trying to win over rebellious backbenchers, according to one Labour source.
Another said the government now faces a choice between making another damaging U-turn, or “taking a battering from MPs”. If the party backtracks on the reforms, the source said that, after the previous reversal on winter fuel cuts, Rachel Reeves’s position would then no longer be tenable.
A senior backbencher reiterated the claim that the chancellor’s position is under threat.
“This ends one of two ways: either we sack him [Starmer] or he sacks her [Reeves],” the MP said.
The chancellor is being blamed more for the push to cut welfare than the beleaguered work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, who has to try to win the vote.
Ms Kendall’s appearance before a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday evening did little to help the government’s cause despite “some obviously planted friendly questions”, an MP noted.
The Independent has revealed how some MPs have been threatened with losing the whip or even deselection if they rebel.
But one source noted: “MPs don’t care [about the threats] because they fear their constituency parties will deselect them if they don’t vote against it!”
Speaking to journalists on the plane to the Nato summit in the Hague, Sir Keir vowed to press ahead with the reforms. He said: “We were elected to change what is broken in our country. The welfare system is broken, and that’s why we will press ahead with our reforms. It’s very important that we do so, because the current system is not working for anybody.
“People are trapped in it, and I’m not prepared to allow that to happen. So we will press forward with our reforms”.
The prime minister also denied that he had failed to persuade his own MPs of the moral case for the reforms.
“There is a clear moral case, which is the current system doesn’t help those who want to get into work. It traps people. I think it’s 1,000 people a day going on to PIP.
“The additions to PIP each year are the equivalent of the population of a city the size of Leicester. That is not a system that can be left unreformed, not least because it’s unsustainable, and therefore you won’t have a welfare system for those that need it in the future.”
Taking a swipe at the more than 100 Labour rebels, he added: “Those that care about a future welfare system have to answer the question – ‘how do you reform what you’ve got to make sure it’s sustainable for the future?’
“But it’s not sustainable to add a city the size of Leicester every year and assume that can be a sustainable future, a model for the future.”
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