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An opportunity for left advance?
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Clothing showing an image of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer worn by a Reform UK party supporter during the Reform UK local election launch rally at Birmingham Arena, in Birmingham, March 28, 2025

ARE WE near a tipping point? Elected not nine months ago with a huge parliamentary majority the Labour government already has the air of the sepulchre about it.

The planned savage cuts in disability benefits, driven solely by the desire to save money and thus propitiate the bond market whatever moral posturing about work accompanied Liz Kendall’s announcement, have alarmed parts of the Labour benches other outrages did not reach.

So far at least 25 Labour MPs — plus the three who remain suspended from the whip — have indicated that they will vote against the move when it comes up in the Commons. Not enough to stop them going through, but enough to provoke a crisis.

A brush with a spook

No dissent allowed

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