Ever since Labour's thumping election victory last summer, Keir Starmer has been repeatedly asked what his government stands for - this week he tried to answer
07:00, 06 Dec 2025Updated 10:13, 06 Dec 2025
Ever since Labour's thumping election victory last summer Keir Starmer has been repeatedly asked what his government stands for.
The PM sought to answer that question - in part - this week, with a long-awaited blueprint to reduce child poverty by 550,000 by the end of the decade. In an article for The Mirror as the government published its child poverty strategy, Mr Starmer said: "This is Labour’s ultimate cause – our moral mission. We tackled it under the last Labour Government. And my Government will do the same."
The move has satisfied restless Labour MPs - at least temporarily - who have been crying out for the Government to define who and what it stands for. As one Labour MP put it: “That's what a Labour government should do, move children out of poverty. That's what we did under Gordon Brown, we lifted thousands of children out of poverty. The Tories plummeted children into poverty, and we're lifting them out again."
They added: “We should be telling the story of why a Labour Government is good for people. And poverty affects all of us. If we want better educated kids, if we want children that are going to be a functioning part of society, this is what it does.”
Measures in the strategy include scrapping the cruel two-child benefit limit, which has been a totemic issue in the party in recent years. In opposition there were massive divisions over the Tory-era policy, which Mr Starmer refused to commit to scrapping ahead of the 2024 election. It also sparked the Labour government's first rebellion last summer.
But the decision to scrap it has set a clear dividing line between Labour and the Tories, with Kemi Badenoch branding the Budget decision as a policy for "Benefits Street". “It was a flashback returning us to a decade ago,” Homelessness Minister Alison McGovern wrote this week for Labour List. “The Tory front bench on the hunt for any opportunity to pour scorn on people they believed were beneath them and ordinary humans being denigrated on the television.
“Nothing has changed for the Tories in the 10 years since George Osborne proudly horrified us with his scroungers versus strivers rhetoric. They still think that pouring scorn on those poorer than themselves helps them politically.”
The party's moral conscience Gordon Brown - often cited by current Cabinet ministers for his work on child poverty - had been leading calls for its abolition. He is now among the leading voices making the argument for scrapping the policy. He accused the Tories this week of "peddling lies" about the two-child benefit limit with cruel myths about workshy families when 60% of families are in work.
It's also a fight Labour MPs are willing to have. One said blunty: “What gets me is these people don't care. What they're drumming up - that hate and that presenting of others - they don't care about the fallout of that. And I think that's the saddest thing.” Another MP added: “The Tories’ shameful record on child poverty is a stain on our society.
"The Prime Minister is absolutely right to say investing in children regardless of where they are born and how many siblings they have is the right thing for our society, morally and indeed for the long term economic health of the country.”
But, from speaking to Labour MPs, one thing is clear: their glee for the child poverty strategy only goes so far. During the election campaign, The Mirror asked Mr Starmer about Labour’s manifesto pledge to develop an “ambitious” child poverty strategy - and whether he had a target for how many children he wanted to lift out of poverty. He said cutting poverty levels required a “strong plan”.
It is expected to lift 550,000 kids out of poverty - over a five-year period. It marks the biggest reduction of child poverty in a single Parliament. Compare this to the Tories, who oversaw around 900,000 children being plunged into poverty over their 14 years in power.
But Labour’s plan does not include clearly defined targets for measuring its progress on cutting poverty. “Although the child poverty strategy is long overdue, it is welcome,” one MP said. “However, if this is the government's moral mission, why have they not set out clear tangible targets to alleviate child poverty?”
And one MP summed up the problem for Mr Starmer. They said the two-child benefit limit move had gone some way to “fix” fractious relations with the Parliamentary Labour Party after the pain of the winter fuel cuts and the welfare U-turn.
But many in the party still acknowledge there is danger on the horizon at the May elections.