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Gordon Brown has warned that Reform will drag Britain back to levels of poverty seen under previous Tory governments, ahead of a major by-election on Thursday.
The former prime minister issued a stark warning over Nigel Farage’s party, claiming they would “force children back into poverty” as a result of their plan to reinstate the two-child benefit cap.
The two-child benefit cap, imposed by Tory former chancellor George Osborne, prevents parents from claiming benefits for any third, or subsequent child, born after April 2017.
While Reform had previously promised to scrap the limit, the party’s new treasury spokesperson, Robert Jenrick, backtracked on the pledge earlier this week, saying it should be kept.
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Former prime minister Gordon Brown has warned of the possible impact of a Reform win (PA)
As Reform, Labour and the Greens battle to win over voters in Gorton and Denton ahead of a crucial by-election this week, Mr Brown highlighted that over 6,000 children in the Greater Manchester constituency would benefit from scrapping the cap.
He told the Daily Mirror: “When voters go to the polls in Gorton and Denton on Thursday, the fate of more than 6,000 thousand local children is in their hands. These are the boys and girls who will benefit on April 1 from the abolition of the hated two child rule.
“This by-election offers a choice. To help children continue to escape poverty with Labour’s brilliant local candidate, Angeliki Stogia, or go back to the Tory poverty years with Reform.”
The party’s plan to reinstate the two-child benefit cap comes despite Reform’s candidate for the forthcoming by-election having previously suggested that people who don’t have children should be taxed extra as punishment.
In a proposal that prompted comparisons to dystopian novelThe Handmaid’s Tale, Matt Goodwin suggested imposing a “negative child benefit tax” on “those who don’t have offspring”, The Independent revealed earlier this month.
Before chancellor Rachel Reeves committed to scrapping the cap last year, Mr Brown had been campaigning against it, warning that it caused a “built-in escalator in the poverty figures”.
“I live in the constituency in which I grew up. I still live here. I see every day this situation getting worse, and I did not think I would see the kind of poverty I saw when I was growing up, when we had slum housing, when we had travelling people coming to my school.
“This is a return to the kind of poverty of 60 years ago, and I think we’ve got to act now, and that’s why it’s urgent that we take action in this Budget,” he warned last year.
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Green Party leader Zack Polanski speaking to party volunteers at Granada Park in Denton (PA)
Labour faces a battle to save the previously rock-solid Greater Manchester constituency in the face of a double electoral threat from both Mr Farage’s Reform UK and Zack Polanski’s Greens.
In 2024, Labour won the seat with a majority of 13,413 and more than half the vote, but the party’s plummeting popularity since Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 means it could be vulnerable.
The prime minister, who made a surprise visit to Gorton and Denton this week, argued that a vote for the Green Party is “in effect, a vote for Reform”.
He added: “And we saw in the by-election in Runcorn last year, where Labour lost by just a handful of votes, we got a Reform Member of Parliament. We mustn’t let that happen again.”
