Labour may finally be preparing to scrap the two-child benefit cap – the single most punitive welfare policy of the past decade.

But while campaigners might welcome this long-overdue move, the delay in announcing the party’s long-promised child poverty strategy raises deeper, more uncomfortable questions.

Because if ending one form of poverty simply deepens another, what kind of victory is that?

A reluctant rethink

The child poverty strategy, first promised for spring, has now been delayed until the autumn—conveniently timed to coincide with the Budget.

The reason?

According to reports, the Child Poverty Taskforce is reconsidering its stance on the two-child benefit cap, under mounting pressure from Labour MPs, charities, and even former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

That tells us everything we need to know.

It seems certain that scrapping the cap wasn’t originally in the strategy.

The Labour Party is not leading on this issue—it’s reacting – to pressure, to polling, to poor results in the local elections.

This is not policymaking guided by principle.

It’s a party scrambling to retrofit morality into a spreadsheet.

The moral agenda unravels

Labour ministers continue to insist they’re “determined to bring down child poverty.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall says the government wants to tackle the “root causes” of deprivation.

But Kendall is also leading the charge on cutting disability benefits, most notably Personal Independence Payment (PIP), in a move condemned by campaigners, disability groups and economists alike.

You cannot wage war on poverty and wage war on disabled people at the same time.

If this is Labour’s “moral mission,” it is already unravelling.

And the phrase “fully-funded” has become the fig leaf for austerity-by-stealth.

Who pays for ending the cap?

Removing the two-child cap will cost an estimated £2–3.5 billion.

Labour has said it will only commit to changes it can afford—meaning the money must come from somewhere.

Leaked memos from Angela Rayner’s department suggest clawing back child benefit from higher earners.

There are whispers about shifting the burden within Universal Credit.

Cuts to winter fuel payments have already triggered a messy U-turn.

The worry is clear: Labour may end the two-child cap by deepening poverty elsewhere—a quiet reshuffling of suffering from one group to another.

Labour once pledged to redistribute wealth.

Now it risks merely redistributing poverty.

Austerity by another name?

If this all sounds grimly familiar, that’s because it is.

Just as the Conservatives rebranded austerity as “tough choices,” Labour now speaks of “affordability” and “fiscal responsibility.”

But underneath the slogans lies the same logic: that those with the least must wait the longest, pay the most, and be grateful for the scraps.

The two-child cap was a symbol of that cruelty—a punishment for children born after an arbitrary date, whose lives were deemed too expensive to count.

Scrapping it would be a moral correction.

But only if the cost isn’t loaded onto pensioners, disabled people, or other struggling families.

The real test

Labour now faces a choice.

It can end the two-child cap and pair it with a truly bold child poverty strategy—one that redistributes wealth, not suffering.

Or it can offer a token reversal, paid for by slicing into other vital lifelines.

Ending the cap would be a hard-fought win for campaigners.

But if it’s funded by taking from others in need, it’s not a step forward.

A true moral agenda does not pick and choose which children, pensioners or disabled people deserve dignity.

The question isn’t just whether Labour will scrap the cap.

It’s whether it will govern as though it believes in the society it says it wants.