Poor Liz Kendall. No doubt Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had irresistible reasons of state for not being on the front bench to support her during the second reading of her Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. But their absence rather underlined the loneliness of her task of beginning the very debate that posed the biggest challenge to the prime minister’s and his chancellor’s authority since they came to office a year ago: welfare cuts.
Nor was it that surprising that the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pulled rank on her own work and pensions shadow secretary, Helen Whately, by leading for the opposition herself. Hers was hardly one of the great parliamentary performances, to put it mildly.
