So much for an end to chaos and sticking plaster politics.

Yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer abandoned his flagship welfare reforms at the eleventh hour – hectic scenes in the House of Commons that left onlookers aghast.

Facing possible defeat on his welfare bill, the PM folded in a last-minute climbdown to save his skin.

The decision was so rushed that some government insiders didn’t even know it was coming – as the deputy PM, deployed as a negotiator, scrambled to save the bill or how much it would cost.

“Too early to answer, it’s moved at a really fast pace,” said one.

The changes were enough to whittle back the rebellion to 49 MPs as the prime minister prevailed, but this was a pyrrhic victory.

Sir Keir lost the argument with his own backbenchers over his flagship welfare reforms, as they roundly rejected his proposed cuts to disability benefits for existing claimants or future ones, without a proper review of the entire personal independence payment (PIP) system first.

PM wins key welfare vote – follow latest

That in turn has blown a hole in the public finances, as billions of planned welfare savings are shelved.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves now faces the prospect of having to find £5bn.

As for the politics, the prime minister has – to use a war analogy – spilled an awful lot of blood for little reward.

He has faced down his MPs and he has lost.

They will be emboldened from this and – as some of those close to him admit – will find it even harder to govern.

After the vote, in central lobby, MPs were already saying that the government should regard this as a reset moment for relations between No 10 and the party.

The prime minister always said during the election that he would put country first and party second – and yet, less than a year into office, he finds himself pinned back by his party and blocked from making what he sees are necessary reforms.

I suspect it will only get worse. When I asked two of the rebel MPs how they expected the government to cover off the losses in welfare savings, Rachael Maskell, a leading rebel, suggested the government introduce welfare taxes.

Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Select Committee chair Debbie Abrahams told me “fiscal rules are not natural laws” – suggesting the chancellor could perhaps borrow more to fund public spending.

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These of course are both things that Ms Reeves has ruled out.

But the lesson MPs will take from this climbdown is that – if they push hard in enough and in big enough numbers – the government will give ground.

The fallout for now is that any serious cuts to welfare – something the PM says is absolutely necessary – are stalled for the time being, with the Stephen Timms review into PIP not reporting back until November 2026.

Had the government done this differently and reviewed the system before trying to impose the cuts – a process only done ahead of the Spring Statement in order to help the chancellor fix her fiscal black hole – they may have had more success.

Those close to the PM say he wants to deliver on the mandate the country gave him in last year’s election, and point out that Sir Keir Starmer is often underestimated – first as party leader and now as prime minister.

But on this occasion, he underestimated his own MPs.

His job was already difficult enough – and after this it will be even harder still.

If he can’t govern his party, he can’t deliver change he promised.

Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial welfare bill has passed its first hurdle in the Commons despite a sizeable rebellion from his MPs.

The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5.5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 on Tuesday evening.

A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

Politics latest: Chancellor left in ‘impossible situation’ after PM survives welfare rebellion

After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.

They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the bill voted through “is not expected to deliver any savings over the next four years” because the savings from reducing the Universal Credit health element for new claimants will be roughly offset by the cost of increasing the UC standard allowance.

Just 90 minutes before voting started on Tuesday evening, disabilities minister Stephen Timms announced the last of a series of concessions made as dozens of Labour MPs spoke of their fears for disabled and sick people if the bill was made law.

How did your MP vote on Labour’s welfare bill?

In a major U-turn, he said changes in eligibility for the personal independence payment (PIP), the main disability payment to help pay for extra costs incurred, would not take place until a review he is carrying out into the benefit is published in autumn 2026.

An amendment brought by Labour MP Rachael Maskell, which aimed to prevent the bill progressing to the next stage, was defeated but 44 Labour MPs voted for it.

A Number 10 source told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby: “Change isn’t easy, we’ve always known that, we’re determined to deliver on the mandate the country gave us, to make Britain work for hardworking people.

“We accept the will of the house, and want to take colleagues with us, our destination – a social security system that supports the most vulnerable, and enables people to thrive – remains.”

But the Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride called the vote “farcical” and said the government “ended up in this terrible situation” because they “rushed it”.

He warned the markets “will have noticed that when it comes to taking tougher decisions about controlling and spending, this government has been found wanting”.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: “I wish we’d got to this point in a different way. And there are absolutely lessons to learn.

“But I think it’s really important we pass this bill at the second reading, it put some really important reforms to the welfare system – tackling work disincentives, making sure that people with severe conditions would no longer be assessed and alongside our investment in employment support this will help people get back to work, because that’s the brighter future for them.”

She made further concessions on Monday in the hope the rebels’ fears would be allayed, but many were concerned the PIP eligibility was going to be changed at the same time the review was published, meaning its findings would not be taken into account.

Her changes were:

• Current PIP claimants, and any up to November 2026, would have the same eligibility criteria as they do now, instead of the stricter measure proposed

• A consultation into PIP to be “co-produced” with disabled people and published in autumn 2026

• For existing and future Universal Credit (UC) claimants, the combined value of the standard UC allowance and the health top-up will rise “at least in line with inflation” every year for the rest of this parliament

• The UC health top-up, for people with limited ability to work due to a disability or long-term sickness, will get a £300m boost next year – doubling the current amount – then rising to £800m the year after and £1bn in 2028/29.

Labour’s welfare reforms bill has passed, with 335 MPs voting in favour and 260 against.

It came after the government watered down the bill earlier this evening, making a dramatic last-minute concession to the demands of would-be rebel MPs who were concerned about the damage the policy would do to disabled people.

The concessions could end up leaving the government with £5.5bn to make up from either tax rises or cuts elsewhere.

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The government has a working majority of 166, so it would have taken 84 rebels to defeat the bill.

In total, 49 Labour MPs still voted against the bill despite the concessions. No MPs from other parties voted alongside the government, although three MPs elected for Labour who have since had the whip removed did so.

Which Labour MPs rebelled?

Last week, 127 Labour MPs signed what they called a “reasoned amendment”, a letter stating their objection to the bill as it was.

The government responded with some concessions to try and win back the rebels, which was enough to convince some of them. But they were still ultimately forced to make more changes today.

In total, 68 MPs who signed the initial “reasoned amendment” eventually voted in favour of the bill.

Nine in 10 MPs elected for the first time at the 2024 general election voted with the government.

That compares with fewer than three quarters of MPs who were voted in before that.

A total of 42 Labour MPs also voted in favour of an amendment that would have stopped the bill from even going to a vote at all. That was voted down by 328 votes to 149.

How does the rebellion compare historically?

If the wording of the bill had remained unchanged and 127 MPs or more had voted against it on Tuesday, it would have been up there as one of the biggest rebellions in British parliamentary history.

As it happened, it was still higher than the largest recorded during Tony Blair’s first year as PM, when 47 of his Labour colleagues (including Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, who also voted against the bill on Tuesday) voted no to his plan to cut benefits for single-parent families.

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