Tom Baldwin is the biographer of Keir Starmer who has been meeting with the PM for three years.
Joining James O’Brien on LBC, he shared the ‘tragedy’ and ‘cauldron of emotion’ that is within Keir Starmer, but that he refuses to share with the public.
From a disabled mother to a brother who died of cancer, Baldwin shares with James the ‘tension’ that maintains a grip over the PM’s life, but that also ‘makes him the person he is’.
Labour is facing fresh questions over the possibility of tax rises in the autumn after concessions to the party’s welfare rebels left a £4.8 billion hole in Rachel Reeves’s spending plans.
The chancellor now faces a fiscal headache as the forecast £4.8 billion in welfare savings have been whittled away to nothing – making the prospect of autumn Budget tax rises look more likely.
The concessions, including the last-minute shelving of plans to restrict eligibility for personal independence payments (Pip), were enough to head off the Government’s first Commons defeat on Tuesday evening.
But they also removed a key plank of Sir Keir Starmer’s welfare reform agenda, delaying changes to Pip until after a review of the benefit not due to conclude until autumn 2026.
Pat McFadden told LBC this morning that there would be “financial costs” as a result of the welfare cuts.
Describing the impact of Pip concessions on the Treasury, Mr McFadden said:” There’s definitely a financial cost…that will all be set out at the Budget.
“That’s one moving part of the public spending picture. There are 100 moving parts to the public spending picture. But the decision to go at slower pace on changes to Pip does have a financial cost”.
Forty- nine of Sir Keir’s own MPs voted against his welfare reforms, with several backbenchers describing the Government’s handling of the issue as “chaotic” and “shambolic”.
The rebellion came despite the government’s decision to remove the Pip changes from the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which was announced just 90 minutes before MPs voted on Tuesday night.
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