On 6 July, two days before George Osborne’s emergency budget, and with a vote on fresh government cuts to benefits and tax credits looming in a new welfare bill, Harman decided to broach the welfare issue at a thinly attended shadow cabinet meeting. She said the party could not resort to reflex opposition. When Burnham resisted, Harman told him bluntly: “You may have noticed we lost the election.” According to one of the people present, “She was unspeakably rude to him.”
Six days later, Harman hurled a grenade into the leadership contest. Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, she announced: “We’re not going to be voting against the welfare bill, we’re not going to be opposing the household benefit cap. We’re going to be understanding about the point about three or more children.”
Burnham supporters were furious. An incandescent member of his camp rang Harman’s aides to complain that the leadership campaign teams had not been informed. “She over-reached herself, basically,” one campaign source said. “It was a political management feck-up. So just as everyone is arriving on the Corbyn train, the mainstream leaderships are being asked to leave in the opposite direction.”
Burnham responded by calling for “a reasoned amendment” to the welfare bill – setting out the arguments for its inadequacy. (Cooper quickly adopted the same line.) But Corbyn’s response was unequivocal. “I am not willing to vote for policies that will push more children into poverty,” he said in a statement shortly after Harman’s TV appearance. “Families are suffering enough. We shouldn’t play the government’s political games with the welfare system if children are at stake.”
Privately, Cooper had warned Harman that her decision could help hand the contest to Corbyn – as the only candidate not in the shadow cabinet, he was not bound to support the interim leader’s line, and was therefore free to rebel. On 14 July, a difficult meeting of the shadow cabinet took place. Harman began by saying that she was going to take contributions in sequence round the table, rather than choosing speakers from those with their hands raised. She started with Tristram Hunt, who was sitting next to her. He launched into a “long and emotional” speech supporting Harman’s position, according to one person present at the meeting. “If she was retiring at that point, I would have booked Tristram to make that speech. It was a great after-dinner speech, but it went on for hours.” After Hunt had finished, Harman said that Cooper would have to speak next since she needed to leave the meeting early – giving Cooper the opportunity to call for an amendment to the bill. The Burnham camp wanted to take the lead in proposing an amendment, and believed they had been stitched up. “It was obvious [Cooper] was plotting with *******, because she then stayed another hour,” one witness said.