THERE is growing opposition across society to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s continued adherence to failed neoliberal, austerity policies.

Three policies in particular have come under fire — with the evidence concerning all three showing the choices being made by Reeves, Starmer and co are causing great human suffering, and are also deeply unpopular.

The first is the maintenance of the two-child benefit limit, an issue over which Labour’s leadership suspended seven MPs within a month of being in office.

On this front, costings from Child Poverty Action Group show this would be the most cost-effective way to lift children out of poverty, and that other interventions to reduce child poverty will fall flat unless the limit goes.

Until it’s scrapped, more and more children are affected, and every day 109 more children are pulled into poverty, totalling 30,000 more since the government took office.

Yet if the policy were scrapped, 350,000 children would be lifted from poverty instantly, at a cost of only £2 billion. The depth of poverty would be reduced for another 800,000 children.

The second is the decision to end the universality of the winter fuel allowance last year, which was immediately opposed by Labour Party conference.

This decision was central to Labour’s recent catastrophic election results and, again, causes human misery.

A survey from Unite earlier in the year found that “Pensioners are missing meals, having to shelter in libraries and are more depressed due to the government’s cuts to the winter fuel allowance.”

Specifically, over two-thirds of its retired members had to turn their heating down, a third took fewer baths or showers and 16 per cent cut back on hot meals due to the increased costs of staying warm.

In this area, polling finds two-thirds of voters would back a rethink and 61 per cent of Labour members back a full reversal of the cut.

The third is proposed disability benefit cuts, which the media reports over 150 Labour MPs have expressed some kind of concern or opposition to, despite the overwhelmingly “Starmerite” inclinations of them.

Some 800,000 people are facing losing their personal independence payment, and removing limited capability for work or work-related activity as part of reforms to the work capability assessment, will leave disabled people across the country at risk of facing sanctions.

This means over three million disabled people losing payments, 350,000 people, including 50,000 children, falling into poverty and disabled people losing on average £1,720 a year.

Interestingly, 59 per cent of Labour members want Starmer to reverse these plans, even though both party membership as a whole, and the left in the party, have shrunk dramatically since 2020.

The government then is on weak ground here and elsewhere. We on the left now need to keep the pressure on to not only defeat the government on these three areas — but must put forward the argument that there is an urgent need to go further and be clear that social security should be higher, and universal, in order to end poverty.

We also need to vigorously campaign for “Welfare Not Warfare,” and have already seen groups such as Disabled People Against the Cuts firmly oppose Starmer’s announcement of the “biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war.”

The pledge was to increase military expenditure by £6bn per year but now some people are arguing for 5 per cent of GDP to be spent on the weapons of war, which is the one area where austerity doesn’t apply.

Defeating the government on any of these fronts will not be easy. It’s absolutely clear Labour’s leadership are ideologically committed to travelling further down the road of neoliberalism, cuts and privatisation — meaning ever-greater misery for millions.

Furthermore, this work must be part of the left putting forward an overarching, transformative alternative economic strategy that can meet the scale of the crises we face, including the deepening cost-of-living emergency.

While united fronts can, and must, be built on individual campaigns against cuts and around individual alternative policies, putting forward a coherent alternative as a whole is essential.

Based on taking on the corporate profiteers head on and ending the failed policies of austerity for good, such an agenda means expanding public ownership and control; investment not cuts; welfare not warfare; taxing wealth; universal public services, welfare and social security; and a green revolution for people and planet.

In each of these areas, socialist solutions to the crisis not only already have great public support, but have the potential to receive much more support.

And we need to urgently mobilise now on all the areas above and beyond — building on the examples of the DPAC and National Pensioner Convention’s lobbies of Parliament; the national and local protests called by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity and others; and this Tuesday’s “Halt Disability Cuts Now” rally organised by the Trade Union Co-Ordinating Group and Arise — a Festival of Left Ideas, which significantly features a number of new Labour MPs who have said they will vote against the cuts.

This then is the time for the left to pair a clear, transformative alternative economic strategy with the building of movements all over the country saying that people must come before profits — and public need before corporate greed. Be part of it!

Matt Willgress is the national organiser for Arise — a Festival of Left Ideas. Follow Arise at twitter.com/arise_festival and www.facebook.com/ariseleftfestival.

Online rally: “Halt Disability Benefit Cuts Now!” Tuesday June 10 6.30pm, with MPs, unions and disability campaigners including Zarah Sultana, Richard Burgon, Sarah Woolley and Ellen Clifford. Info and register at Bit.ly/cutsrally.