Rachael Maskell, the MP for York Central, says she did not come into politics to be a rebel. In Keir Starmer’s first test as prime minister, she chose to vote with the government’s plan to keep the two-child benefit cap in place. She had actively campaigned for it to be scrapped, but ultimately didn’t believe Labour were in government to do anything but alleviate child poverty.
But as Starmer’s policy proposals became harder for Labour MPs to digest, so Maskell’s interventions became stronger. She has since been a key voice against the cut to winter fuel payments, the cut to UK overseas aid to fund defence spending, the abolition of NHS England and the dropping of proposals to compensate Waspi women – all decisions Maskell did not feel were supported by evidence. She even raised eyebrows when she spoke out against the introduction of a VAT on private school fees.
Maskell was one of the first MPs to speak up about plans – formally announced this week – to cut spending on disability benefits. She called for ministers to implement a “compassionate system … not just taking draconian cuts” and said MPs were “feeling really nervous and concerned”. “It should be a Labour government alleviating poverty, not adding to it,” she said.
“I’m not here to cause trouble, because that’s not my nature,” she says. “I want us to win. I want us to get it right. What frustrates me is when the evidence doesn’t back up what is being presented.”
Elected in 2015, Maskell served in two posts in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, as shadow secretary of state for employment rights and shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, but she was never considered a Corbynite.
“I’m not into what I see is the kind of cultism of politics,” she says. “The adulation of the leader and the kind of worship of policy and the line. That isn’t where I come from at all.”
Maskell’s political outlook is shaped by her faith. A Christian, she kickstarts her week by having a “bit of a me catch-up” at one of the NewFrontiers network’s evangelical churches.
She’s often incorrectly described as being a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, a caucus of leftwing Labour MPs which has included Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.
“I’ve never been in the Socialist Campaign Group. I’ve always been kind of on the edge. I guess because I can’t see where that’s taking us,” she says. “I’ve got progressive politics. I pursue the route of evidence. Of course I work with a lot of my colleagues in the SCG, regularly. But I’ve never signed up and got the badge.”
“The Labour party was set up with a specific purpose: to ensure that we did advocate and support for working people who have had a really tough time under the former systems, and to have that unique voice,” she says.
“We have got such a heavy responsibility that other parties don’t carry, especially the responsibility that we have for those people who are living in poverty: to make sure that we make a way for them. It should never be about us climbing up and pulling up the ladder. It should always be about us reaching down and helping people up.
after newsletter promotion
“Unless we’re doing that, and from whatever platform we have at whatever moment, then we’re not Labour. And that’s why I will fight for that space.”
She says she is growing tired of “management and transactional politics” and hopes the Labour leadership will set a vision; ideally a pluralistic one that the public can follow.
“I’m never a lone runner,” she says. “There’s always lots of people who I’m working alongside who would have the same value set, that want to see a progressive Labour government.”