Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Rebellious Labor Party members of parliament dealt Prime Minister Tony Blair a blow Wednesday when a junior minister resigned to protest cuts in single-mother benefits and 48 of Blair’s 419 legislators voted against the reductions.
Blair easily defeated a move to restore about half of the cuts of up to $18 a week in welfare payments to single mothers raising a family.
But it was the first serious revolt by left-wingers frustrated by the Blair’s middle-of-the-road policies. Blair won a 179-seat majority in a May general election.
Junior Scottish Office Minister Malcolm Chisholm said in a resignation letter that the benefit cuts are “an attack on some of the poorest women in society.”
