Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has been called a lot of things in his time, now he is being called ‘Sir Kid Starver,’ one assumes he isn’t a fan of this new moniker.
It comes as Starmer’s refusal to abolish the two-child limit on claiming some benefits will be challenged at a meeting of the party’s policy body this weekend.
The Child Poverty Action Group estimates removing the limit would cost £1.3bn a year but would lift 250,000 children out of poverty overnight.
This is despite his shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, condemning it as “heinous” just last month.
Sir Keir told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg the policy would not change under a Labour government.
Starmer is facing a growing backlash from across his party over the issue.
Sir Kid Starver
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, told LBC that he had spoken to “quite a lot of Labour MPs” about this issue.
He went on: “They are seething with anger, particularly as commitments have been made regularly by the party that we would take children out of poverty. Even the Blair government, which Keir Starmer often quotes, did do a great deal to lift children out of poverty by not having a two-child policy …
“Even in areas like mine, there are high levels of child poverty – probably 40% of the children in my constituency. All across the north-east, which Jamie [Driscoll] represents – a third of all children across the whole of the region are living in poverty. That has got to go and got to change.
“And it’s the Labour party that ought to be offering that pathway to change and it’s not doing it at the moment.”
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