Labour's honeymoon is over within the month of Keir Starmer taking office. It did not take long at all for him to reveal his authoritarian instincts.

Yesterday MPs voted on an SNP amendment to the King's Speech which called on the government to repeal the abhorrent two-child cap on benefits immediately.

The SNP were joined by the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, independents including Jeremy Corbyn, and even the Ulster Unionists, but with Starmer's huge Commons majority - won on just a third of votes cast - there was never any chance of the amendment being carried.

The Tory two-child benefit cap, introduced under Theresa May in 2017, is now the Labour two-child benefit cap.

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Today we're getting a lot of self-serving exculpatory waffle from Labour figures, we're looking at you Blair McDougall, about how there is no magic bullet for tackling child poverty in a transparent attempt to excuse the Labour Party for not adopting the single measure which would do more than any other to tackle the issue.

It's a bit like saying there's no single magic bullet for minimising the injuries caused by bear attacks while refusing to do anything to deal with the bear which is currently chewing your leg off. But then, this is the glib McDougall here, the man responsible for the original Project Fear during the 2014 independence referendum.

Here we are ten years on, and he's still gaslighting Scotland.

Labour has learned nothing in its years in the Scottish political wilderness. McDougall (below) claims that tackling child poverty is in Labour's DNA, so is lying and being deceitful.

(Image: PA)

Not one Labour MP from Scotland voted for the amendment, not one, this is despite the fact that Anas Sarwar loudly proclaimed before the election that "Scottish Labour" is opposed to the two-child cap and got himself approving headlines in the Daily Record promising that he'd stand up for Scotland against Starmer. That didn't last long did it.

A week before the general election the Daily Record published a banner headline VOTE FOR ENDING CHILD POVERTY with a photo of Gordon Brown, calling on readers to back Starmer's "moral mission". It was almost, dare I say it, like a Vow wasn't it?

We've even got McDougall back again. It's like the world's crappiest version of Groundhog Day.

Labour's Scottish MPs have already proven that they are nothing more than lobby fodder for Starmer's centre-right project and refused to tackle child poverty the first time they were given the chance to do so. Change, eh? Vote Labour to keep Tory policies.

Despite there never being any serious threat to his government, Starmer chose to crack down hard on the seven Labour MPs who defied the whip and decided that they could not consent to the continuation of a policy which anti-poverty charities describe as the main driver of child poverty in the UK.

The seven have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party for six months. Starmer (below) is sending a signal that he will not tolerate any dissent amongst his backbenchers.

Having displayed his authoritarian instincts, Starmer's Labour Party is avoiding media scrutiny. The party has been accused of arrogance after refusing to put a minister on Sky News to explain Starmer's decision to suspend seven MPs for voting against keeping the two-child benefit cap and associated rape clause in place.

Not that Starmer needs to worry about scrutiny from BBC Scotland. It is still protecting the Labour Party in Scotland, no big surprise there. Equally unsurprising is that Anas Sarwar is keeping his head down.

There was no mention of the story on Reporting Scotland this morning and Good Morning Scotland played it down with no mention of the fact that none of the 37 Scottish Labour MPs voted to oppose the cap despite BBC Scotland previously publicising Scottish Labour's supposed opposition to it.

Neither was there any mention of the news that Sarwar's predecessor Richard Leonard had backed the rebels.

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On BBC Scotland's lunchtime news, there was again no mention of the votes of Labour's 37 Scottish MPs to keep the cap. It did find time to show Starmer attacking the SNP for the rise in child poverty in Scotland.

Starmer is unwilling to abolish the cap as his focus groups tell him that there is public support for it, due to the distortions and misinformation put out by the right-wing press.

He and the Labour Party, do not challenge the stereotypes and misinformation of the right-wing press, they pander to them.

There is a myth that “feckless” people are having children that they cannot afford, in the knowledge that the state will provide, and this is “unfair” to taxpayers. That is predicated on the false assumption that people are always able to plan out their lives.

(Image: Andrew Milligan)

Accidental pregnancy is a very real thing, and not all women are willing or able to have an abortion. People's life circumstances change. A couple may both be working and able to afford a third child but then one or both lose their job.

In these days of precarious employment, a breadwinner can find their earnings significantly reduced almost overnight and forcing the family into poverty due to the two-child cap.

Relationships can and do break up, with a grievous impact on household finances. People can suffer illness or accidents which render them unable to work.

Six years ago, I never expected that I'd become disabled, but I am now significantly disabled.

Luckily my job entails typing away on a laptop from home, but I can no longer drive, and my mobility is severely restricted. Had I almost any other job I would now be entirely reliant on benefits.

A parent of three kids in my position would find themselves in even greater hardship due to the two-child cap. That's the reality of the policy.

It does not punish people who deliberately decide to have children that they cannot afford, it punishes families which already have children but whose circumstances change through no fault of their own.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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