BBC News host skewers squirming Liz Kendall on air | UK News

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was left visibly rattled during a dwell BBC News interview as she squirmed under strain over whether or not her place was “still tenable”. It got here after the Welfare Bill scraped through its second studying following a last-minute U-turn to head off a main Labour rebel. During a tense interview, she was requested: “Is your position tenable you’ve been repeatedly humiliated in the last week?”

She started to squirm, saying: “Listening is a strength in politics as it is in life,” before being cut off and requested again: “Will you carry on?” Her response was: “Absolutely I will carry on.”

This comes as the Labour authorities’s welfare invoice has handed a House of Commons vote after one other main concession to Labour rebels. The authorities was pressured to abandon key facets of its plans in order to quash Labour dissent.

The watering down of the laws represents probably the most vital knock to the prime minister’s management since coming into energy final 12 months.

It was revealed that 335 MPs voted in favour of the laws on Tuesday evening (July 1), while 260 voted against it, giving the federal government a profitable majority of 75. Its precise majority is 165.

Kendall also admitted “there are lessons to learn” and confessed that “it’s been a bumpy time” amid a surge of calls from the public to step down. It did not take long before followers flooded to X – previously identified as Twitter to share their ideas online.

One person fumed: “Liz Kendall should go she will’t be trusted neither can starmer.” Another penned: “Liz Kendall must go tonight if she does not starmer is proven to weak to lead.”

Meanwhile, a third blasted: “Liz Kendall’s position is untenable. What a shambles this govt is and those who voted for the bill should be ashamed of themselves as they don’t know what they voted for.”

A fourth argued that the bill passing was “utter humiliation” and that the real losers are the British public. They explained: “This is an utter humiliation for Liz Kendall, and for the Labour whips office. And a complete catastrophe for Rachel Reeves and the Treasury.

“But the true losers of course are us, the British public. This shambles means larger borrowing, larger taxes and 4 years of chaos.”

Kendall tried to defend the revised plans, saying the federal government was decided to repair “the broken benefits system that we inherited from the party opposite, and to deliver a better life for millions of people across our country. The people we are in politics to serve deserve so much better than this!”

While the government won the vote, the process leading up to this point was a bruising one for Keir Starmer, with the Prime Minister having to offer a sequence of concessions to keep away from a main Labour backbench rebel.

There are also questions over how a lot money will probably be saved by the welfare reforms following the concessions. Initially, the federal government had deliberate to change the eligibility standards for incapacity advantages for all new claimants from November 2026 but now the new system is not going to come into power until the review has concluded.