Osborne’s regressive benefit policy is despised even by some of its Tory architects. But Starmer is in no mood to make spending promises
Few policies attract such depths of contempt and anger in progressive circles as the two-child benefit limit, which, six years after its introduction, has proved to be every bit as malicious and incompetent as its critics predicted, and as such has become the surprising centre of a bitter internal Labour party row over whether it should be abolished.
After Labour’s policy forum over the weekend that dispute is at an impasse. The leadership remains implacably committed to keeping the two-child limit, at least publicly, as part of an iron devotion to spending discipline. MPs and activists remain in hurt, baffled despair that the party will not openly signal it will ditch this most despised of policies.
