The anger over winter fuel payment won’t go away, so Starmer needs to stop singing the song of despair, and throw pensioners a seasonal gift this budget, says Mirror columnist Brian Reade – or he’ll be blamed for any OAPs who freeze to death
TWO months into a much-needed Labour government wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
The new intake MPs crying in the division lobby as they were strong-armed to vote against their principles and their constituents’ wishes. The Health Minister trying to get across plans for a 10-year rebuild of our broken NHS while being asked by Sky’s Kay Burley as we ate our Corn Flakes: “How do you sleep at night?”
The Prime Minister being asked at PMQs how many people he thinks he’ll kill this winter. The Mirror’s mailbag bursting at the seams with howls of rage against the Chancellor, and lifelong supporters saying they will never vote Labour again.
The party we hoped would bring joy and light after a decade and a half of Tory cuts and cronyism, sings only of despair. It feels like Keir Starmer has been belting out Morrissey’s entire back catalogue for two months. Because heaven knows we’re miserable now.
And all because the keen five-a-side footballer scored one of the most unnecessary own goals ever from a new Labour Prime Minister. Telling Britons we need to dig our way out of a financial black hole then throwing the shovels at millions of state pensioners.
Well, the digging needs to stop. Because the anger over removing the winter fuel payment from millions of elderly people who budgeted for it, and who need it as energy prices rise, won’t go away.
This would have been the first year I received the WFP, but I, like millions of other pensioners who are still working, don’t need that £200 cheque. I’d rather it went to help the young or the poor.
So I agree that the system needs reforming. But not scrapping as we head into winter when Labour’s own research shows that means-testing the allowance could see up to 3,800 OAPs die.
It’s rushed, ill-thought through, cruel and unnecessary when there’s plenty of fat to be chopped off tax dodging schemes for the rich. Labour has lost the moral argument among its own people so it’s time to fix it. Here’s what I’d do.
Back in 1972, legendary trade union leader and pensioners’ champion Jack Jones persuaded Ted Heath to give OAPs a £10 Christmas bonus (when the pension was £6.75 a week) which they still receive today.
Had that bonus risen with inflation it would now be worth £174. So why not upgrade it for one year?
Why doesn’t Rachel Reeves, as a fair compromise, announce in her budget that she is raising the bonus this Christmas to £174 for everyone who didn’t qualify for the WFP, while asking the millions of pensioners like me, who don’t need the extra cash, to do the patriotic thing and waive it.
Then apologise for the unnecessary upset and announce a commission to review how to get next year’s fuel payment to those who really need it.
Because this should not be a hill for a new Labour government promising change and a brighter future for all, after 14 years of vicious Tory austerity, to die on.
If Labour don’t compromise in some way, then the deaths of every elderly person perishing through hypothermia this winter who did not qualify for the bonus, will be blamed on Starmer and Reeves.
And their denials, however well argued, won’t be listened to.
