Starmer's first U-turn must be on winter fuel

Depriving pensioners was the wrong way to launch Labour's New Austerity

Photo by Ayesha Firdaus on Unsplash

Keir Starmer has landed himself in a fiscal guddle over the means testing of winter fuel payments. He unwisely focused attention on the alleged “black hole” in the public finances and said pensioners had to pay part of the cost of filling it. “Difficult choices had to be made”. This simply invited critics to do an inventory of choices and ask why pensioners on fixed incomes, who cannot increase their earnings by working harder or longer, should be the first to pay up

What about the £10 billion in above-inflation pay rises to public sector workers? What about the £7 billion in Foreign Aid? What about that £11 billion that the Net Zero Secretary, Ed Miliband, has promised developing countries to help combat climate change? Trimming these of half a billion or so off each of these items of elective expenditure seems a quite reasonable alternative to depriving old people of heat. But the response from Labour and its Twitter fan base to this observation has been confected moral outrage.

How dare the racist right call for a cut in aid to developing countries to combat poverty and global warming? Didn’t we colonise them? The planet is boiling dontcha know. And we need our railways don’t we? Well, yes of course. But freezing old folk isn’t going to halt climate change or make the trains run on time. Inviting voters to weigh the moral case for prioritising foreign aid to countries like China and India against the welfare of pensioners made Rachel Reeves look stupid as well as hard-hearted.

This absurdist moral calculus is one the government chose to make. Of course pensioners should not freeze. Of course they are more deserving of help than countries demanding reparations. What about reparations to the generation who fought the war against fascism? Ok, many have already passed on, but what about those born in the shadow of war who built this society out of the ruins?

It was reckless and callous to launch Labour’s new austerity drive by limiting winter fuel payments only to those on the very basic pension credit. This cut off means that anyone earning above £218 a week is considered a “wealthy pensioner”. That is patently ridiculous This isn’t going away. Labour’s first real policy reversal is coming. They might as well get it over with. But how did they get into this mess?