Prime Minister Keir Starmer's authority is hanging by a thread after last night's rebellion.

Keir Starmer has been ridiculed by his online critics after he was forced into an eleventh hour U-turn over his welfare reforms last night.

The government’s plan to cut Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments (PIP) was met with fury by Labour backbenchers in recent weeks.

Labour MPs ended up banding together to set up a rebellion so large that Downing Street feared the proposals would not be voted through parliament – even though the government has a working majority of 165 MPs.

So, the prime minister had to introduce not one but two rounds of concessions to the bill to win the rebels over.

The watered down legislation was voted through on its second reading in the Commons on Tuesday, but at a very high cost to the prime minister and his authority over the party.

It certainly does not help that as leader of opposition, Starmer condemned Boris Johnson and the Tory government for lurching from “crisis to crisis and U-turn to U-turn”.

As the Labour leader wrote in 2020: “When they’ve notched up 12 U-turns and rising, the only conclusion is serial........

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