This is a sign of weakness, not strength. To suspend four MPs for rebellion suggests a lack of authority and a lack of nerve, not a sense of confidence. Bullying and threats are no way to manage a party, but a signal that Labour has lost control, with its crude methods in cutting winter fuel payments and its attempt to cut disability benefits. As MPs head off for the summer next week, Keir Starmer and the Labour whips hope they will be mulling over their futures, having been warned of the severe penalty for disloyalty. But I doubt that’s the message most will absorb.
More than 120 MPs signalled their opposition to the proposed welfare cuts, and many more agreed but didn’t sign the amendment. Was the solution to sack the lot? Or just the token “ringleaders”? In fact there were none, just a strong belief among backbenchers of all varieties that not only were the cuts wrong, they were badly done and would be politically damaging, as indeed they were. Those suspended are of the soft left, by no means Corbynites. Rachael Maskell is a bit of a moral grandstander, annoying other MPs by suggesting her conscience is clearer than theirs, but suspensions tend to play to those tendencies (though the four will find that once they are no longer representing Labour, they will lose their voice with broadcasters).
