Labour MP Ian Byrne: 'We need to stop making political decisions which are suicidal on the doorstep'
Labour MP Ian Byrne was suspended by his party after voting to end the two-child benefit cap. He tells the Big Issue about clashing with the Labour top brass, how the party face a squeeze at the next general election and why he's supporting Big Issue in standing against poverty
Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne's anti-poverty campaigning has put him on a collision course with Labour's frontbench. Image: UK Parliament
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Ian Byrne has long been a staunch campaigner for eradicating poverty but the Labour MP didn’t expect that to put him on a collision course with his own party when they entered government.
The Liverpool West Derby MP, who was elected in 2019, had the whip suspended last year after voting for an SNP amendment to end the two-child benefit cap. He was reinstated in February this year.
Before coming into parliament, Byrne made a name for himself as a campaigner taking aim at food poverty. He is co-founder of Fans Supporting Foodbanks, which brought Everton and Liverpool supports together to collect food for people facing hunger and inspired similar efforts from football fans all over the country. Byrne remains ardent campaigner for a Right to Food.
Big Issue caught up with Byrne at his centre for social justice at Dovecot Multi Activity Centre in north Liverpool. Byrne was attending the centre to lend his support to a protest over the proposed closure of a library at the centre in a funding row. The MP has brought a number of services to the centre to help his constituents with everything from legal advice to housing support.
He told Big Issue about his collision course with Keir Starmer over Hillsborough and benefit reforms, why he worries about disorder in left-behind towns and what Labour needs to do to avoid seeing its voter base squeezed at the next general election.
‘I think you can see a bit of a sea change in the air’
TBI: Are you worried about community cohesion and losing something like a library in your constituency might mean?
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
IB: Yeah absolutely. I really am. I think people need to see a sea change in how the areas are treated and money is coming into the areas. People have just seen cut after cut. They’ve seen a lack of investment. They’ve seen things close. They feel as though society and the system is not working for them. I think then once you get to that point powerful voices can come in and make arguments about why we’re in this situation. There’s legitimate concerns around how immigration is being handled in different areas across the country and certainly across Liverpool and we are where we are now. Liverpool has always been a very welcoming city and I think you can feel a bit of a sea change in the air where people are on their knees and, unfortunately, when you’re in there sorts of times, it’s quite easy then to divide communities, and that’s where I feel we are now.
Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne (right) joined protesters against the potential library closure at Dovecot Multi Activity Centre in Liverpool. Image: Liam Geraghty
What does that sea change mean for how you are addressing people, getting them on board and engaging with them? Do you have to think differently about how you engage with them as an MP?
Good question. I think I’ve always listened when people have got concerns and legitimate concerns and you can’t castigate people and pigeonhole them if they’ve got concerns around how they see their community. You’ve got to listen, you know. And if you’ve got a debate with them, you debate with them. But you’ve got to take their views back to the place where I work in London. We do a lot of citizens assemblies in West Derby where we actually listen on contentious subjects, like we had one on assisted dying, the recent planned welfare cuts to disability payments. So it’s something that I firmly believe that you’ve got to do. I think it’s worrying for us all where we are.
Your entire political career, and your career before that, has been built on battling austerity and tackling poverty. How important is that to you?
Massively important. It gives you opportunities and obviously all the links that we’ve made to what we’ve done in politics and outside politics, it’s about pulling that all together and bringing it together. It’s bringing all of the elements to support access to justice, social justice and it’s creating a hub for them. Hopefully that MPs can look at this [Byrne’s centre for social justice] because, unfortunately, areas like mine have just been eviscerated by cuts. So many services have been lost and so many people have gone without justice, and I struggle to countenance that. We’ve created this, and let’s see what we can create and build.
Where are things with the Hillsborough Law?
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We got let down on the April 15th deadline by a bill that was brought forward and wasn’t worthy of its name. So we’ve had to do lots of actions in parliament to make politicians and, certainly, the prime minister aware that we’re not going to stand by. It would be a continuation of the travesty of justice and the betrayal. In my personal opinion, speaking to people who’ve seen the proposed bill, that would be a continuation of the betrayal of Hillsborough and while I’ve got a breath in my body I won’t sit back and allow that to happen. So that’s why we’ve done so much over the last couple of months to make sure that the prime minister understands that he’s made commitments and it’ll be people like me that hold him to that.
The Hillsborough Law is not the only issue where that’s happened, right? How are you feeling about how Labour are doing in charge?
I got suspended for voting against the two-child benefit cap six months out. I told them to scrap the winter fuel payment because it was going to be a political disaster. I was ignored and they’ve had to do a U-turn on that. You’re burning political capital all the time on things that aren’t necessary. Obviously we have the cuts to disability benefits and PIP and obviously we were extremely strong against them because, again, we could see the damage it was going to do to my community and the damage it was going to do to the city of Liverpool and beyond. It was totally unnecessary in my opinion. There are other elements you can look at. No one’s saying you don’t need to reform the benefit system. Look at it from a point of reform and wanting to make it better, not starting at a point where you want to cut x amount of billion pounds away from it because that isn’t reforms, that’s cuts. I think that’s where we had to make the government understand. We just need to stop making political decisions which are suicidal on the doorstep.
‘As if I could look myself in the mirror and vote for that’
In your career, battling against poverty and trying to eradicate it has played a big part. It must be inconceivable for you to turn around to your constituents and say, ‘I’ve signed up for this when we know the analysis says 50,000 children will be pushed into poverty’?
It’s just something I won’t do. When we got the analysis that we’re going to push 50,000 more kids into poverty – as if I’d do that. As if I could look myself in the mirror and vote for that. I’m in a position where I just won’t vote for anything I feel is detrimental to my constituents and, unfortunately, that brings you into clashes with the party which you don’t want.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
What was it like when you got suspended? How did you feel about it?
I was told I would be if I voted for it. We were told in no uncertain terms that it could result in suspension. But, as you’ve outlined, I’ve spent all my time outside parliament and then in parliament on about political choices and hunger is a political choice. I’ve got Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency and some fantastic paediatricians and doctors bring me to seminars and tell me the two-child cap is decimating and causing so much poverty. So when I got the chance to vote against it, I was going to vote against it. I wasn’t going to do anything which cast poor pensioners into even more extreme poverty. And then obviously we’ve got the disability elements of it. I just wish they’d stop putting me in the position where I’ve got to do these votes and that’s what we’re asking them to do: to be a progressive government. Because I firmly believe that if you start alienating huge swathes of the working classes, they’re going to look elsewhere and that’s where we are now.
Are you worried about them looking elsewhere?
Absolutely yeah. I think if you look at the opinion polls and anecdotally in Liverpool, you’re getting people coming up to you and the unpopularity of the party at the moment and the leader is a huge issue.
‘I just think there’s going to be an almighty squeeze on the Labour Party vote’
The £39bn funding for social and affordable housing announced the other day is at least a step forward. But, like you said, if the government is burning political capital to fight other fires, you don’t get the chance to make the case.
We’re not even getting the opportunity to talk about the good things because that’s outweighed in people’s minds by what’s being done. When you think about the winter fuel payments cut, what it actually got you back in revenue compared to what it cost you in political capital? It’s just markedly bad politics. We were told that the grown ups were back in charge and it’s the left that were the issue. So that’s interesting.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Speaking of the left, what are your thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new party?
It’s such a shame. Zarah’s a great, great friend of mine and it’s such a shame that she feels the Labour Party isn’t home for her now. That’s something which I think everybody here from the top of the Labour Party to the union movements has got to reflect on. And Jeremy as well. I think what we’re seeing is an appetite where a lot of Labour’s policies have been to look at Reform and move towards that ground. But there’s also huge swathes of the electorate that want a vision of hope. The system’s completely broken for them and economically it’s kaput. How do we make that better? How do we change lives and give them a vision? What they’ll do is paint a different vision and I think there’ll be a squeeze on both sides, from Reform on the right and then, potentially, what comes about from Jeremy’s party. But you have the Greens, I think [Zack] Polanski’s potentially going to win that and he’s saying some things which charm an awful lot of people. Then you’ll have the Lib Dems as well. I just think there’s going to be an almighty squeeze on the Labour Party vote. And the thing is: we’ve got the levers of power. You’ve got to be able to knock on that doorstep and people open the door and go: you’ve done this for me, you’ve built council houses, you’ve lifted people up out of poverty, my city, my community looks far better. There’s more investment coming in now – that takes time after what we’ve just come back from with the Tories – but we haven’t got time. That’s where you go back to that 1945 moment [of building council housing] and it’s got to have the same speed that was delivered by a Labour government then.
I think it’s great. I think it’s exactly what we need. Amnesty International are doing similar things as well. I think it’s great that we’re having these sorts of conversations now. For me, we should be presenting the Labour Party with something where they can just go: “Yeah that’s something which we should be doing.” You’ve got a Labour government that’s got three to four years to actually do things. Keir Starmer could say as the MP in four years time that I’m going to be standing again as your prime minister and I’ve done A, B, C and D. And I think a key part of that Labour Party DNA is eradicating poverty. It should be and that’s why it’s gone against the craw for so many that policies that have been put forward weren’t going to do that. They were going to enhance poverty. They were going to make it worse.
