Sir Keir Starmer hosts a reception ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir Starmer is coming under pressure from leftist elements of his party over a series of hated policy decisions.
After dozens voted against the Government over cutting the Winter Fuel Payment for millions of vulnerable pensioners, left-wing Labour MPs have begun to make fresh demands on Sir Keir’s administration.
Earlier this week, Brian Leishman, the new MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, called on the Government to implement a wealth tax. This followed the open letter signed by 30 MPs and peers prior to Rachel Reeves’ tax-hiking budget at the end of last year.
Mr Leishman said: “The Chancellor has penned herself in a little bit with some of the things she has promised.
“I speak with parliamentary colleagues and many of them do approve of redistribution through a wealth tax.”
Neil Duncan-Jordan has said Labour’s U-turn on the Waspi women ‘undermines public trust in politicians’ (Image: Parliament)
The Government’s fragility could be exposed further next week if the SNP forces through a vote on compensation for the Waspi women next week, as the party is expected to do.
Since Work and Pension’s Secretary Liz Kendall’s announcement that the Government would not be compensating the Waspi women, several backbench Labour MPs have joined opposition MPs in expressing utter dismay.
The Telegraph reported one senior activist on the left of the Labour Party as saying: “At the moment, there are a lot of disaffected MPs who are not rebelling because of the fear of having the whip removed, but as time goes on more and more people will feel that the risk of not speaking out is greater than the risk of losing the whip.
“They will think that they are going to lose their seats anyway, so they might as well speak out and show to their constituents that they do not support some of these unpopular policies.
“I don’t think we have got there yet, but let’s see what happens if there is a vote on the Waspi women, for example.”
Diane Abbott has attacked the PM repeatedly (Image: Getty)
Neil Duncan-Jordan, the Labour MP for Poole, wrote on the radical Labour Outlook website that “even those most loyal of Labour MPs were dumbfounded” by a decision to U-turn on Waspi women compensation.
He added that the decision “seriously undermines the public’s trust in politicians”. He went on: “There is a sense with some MPs that this issue is the last straw.”
Diane Abbott said the Prime Minister could not understand the plight of the Waspi women because “he’s on his big fat DPP pension”.
There has also been discontent on the part of the some Labour MPs over the Government’s handling of the crisis in Gaza. Radical left-winger Zahra Sultana named the PM, as she slammed him for refusing to call Israel’s war against Hamas a genocide.
“Despite what the Prime Minister says at PMQs,” Sultana said, “targeting civilians, blocking aid and destroying survival infrastructure meet the legal criteria of genocide”.
