The two-child limit is abolished at last. Watch out for the narrative that will follow | Frances Ryan

And just like that, the two-child benefit limit was finally abolished. “I don’t intend to preside over a status quo that punishes children for the circumstances of their birth,” the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told the Commons, as she used the budget to scrap, from April 2026, one of Britain’s most controversial policies. Four hundred and fifty thousand children will be lifted out of poverty as a result. That means 450,000 children who won’t go to bed hungry any more or walk to school with holes in the soles of their shoes. That means Keir Starmer’s government, after 16 months in power and endless will-they-won’t-they procrastination, has – at last – done the right thing. Introduced by the Conservatives in 2017 to curb public spending and teach low-income parents that “children cost money”, the policy means parents can claim universal credit or tax credits only for their first two offspring. As of this summer, a staggering 1.7 million children lived in households affected by the policy. That’s one in nine kids who miss out on help worth £3,514 a year. Over nearly a decade, the cap has become a key part of the “war on welfare” narrative – and the key driver of worsening child poverty. The two-child limit fundamentally broke a core tenet of the welfare state: rather than helping a child because they are in need, it arbitrarily denied support based on the order of their birth. The notorious “rape clause” – in which women have to prove to the state that their third pregnancy was conceived without consent to get an exemption – came to symbolise the scale and casual cruelty of Tory austerity. As Reeves, Britain’s first female chancellor, said with palpable emotion on Wednesday, she won’t tolerate it. Labour MPs, charities and civil groups will all be relieved that the Treasury has finally found the funds to repeal it, though not everyone will forgive Reeves for the wait. Each day that she and Starmer prevaricated, an average of 109 more children were pushed into poverty. No one can pretend they didn’t know the harm it was causing. As far back as six years ago, research showed nearly all families affected by the limit were cutting back on food, medication, heating or clothing. Domestic violence survivors have long warned that the policy makes it harder to leave an abusive partner. Other women have said they felt pushed towards an abortion, often after their contraception failed. Politicians – both those with either a blue or a red rosette – let it continue anyway. But if those on the left rue Starmer’s failure to end the policy sooner as a sign of his abandonment of Labour values, those on the right will use its abolition – in a tax-raising budget – as proof that he is prioritising benefits claimants. Or as the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, put it on Wednesday: “The Labour party should be renamed the Welfare party.” Days before the budget, the Daily Mail published a poll asking readers whether Reeves should use a raid on the “salary sacrifice” tax break on private pensions to fund ending the two-child cap. Expect much more of this worker v shirker propaganda in the coming days, despite the fact nearly three in five families affected by the cap were already in work – and that any of us might lose a job or fall ill after having a child we could previously afford. Watch out also for the rise in anti-migrant sentiment adding a layer of racism to this longstanding classism. When the Times reported on the two-child limit’s effect on child poverty this week, it noted that rising immigration “may” be a “contributing factor” to hardship and large families, with white British people less likely than “Bangladeshi families” or “Pakistani families” to have three or more children. In recent days, hard-right social media accounts have been posting about the groups that will supposedly benefit from the policy change, often accompanied by unidentified photos of large minority-ethnic families. In the 2010s, the right’s fear was the working class breeding too much; in 2025, it’s working-class people who aren’t white. That Reeves felt she had to pair repealing the two-child limit with removing tax relief for the Motability scheme and leases for “luxury cars” for disabled people shows starkly the deal that she is making with the rightwing media and potential Reform voters. It is not enough to give children a warm meal because they are hungry. Ministers must justify it by reassuring critics they have not gone “soft on welfare”. Compassion, it seems, comes with a footnote. There are moments in politics to celebrate and there are moments to not be complacent. Sometimes, it is both at once. Eight years of campaigning, court cases and a change in government have at last rid the country of the scourge of the benefit limit. Hundreds of thousands of children will be safer; their parents less afraid. And yet the energy it took to get here and the backlash it has already provoked show starkly how progress is an uphill battle. Decency is not a simple sell. Prejudice and resentment are, sadly, much easier to spread. The most obvious of truths – that every child matters, that some things go beyond partisan point-scoring – are, to some, not obvious at all. Cheer the victory today. Tomorrow, the fight continues. The two-child limit is at last abolished but the sentiment that created it is alive and well. Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist