Asked by the Deputy PM to invite his friends to join the Labour Party, Mirror columnist Paul Routledge says he wouldn’t be able to find any his age who aren’t deeply furious over not being warned about the winter fuel shock
ON the day she addressed Labour’s annual conference, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner sent me an email.
The computer-generated message went to everyone in the party, asking us to sign up family and friends as members.
The response from Mrs R to this invitation is not printable in a family newspaper. I didn’t bother trying others of my generation – I know what they’d say too.
Why? Anger over the abolition of the winter fuel allowance has gone deeper and wider than Ms Rayner appears to understand.
Delegates at this week’s policy bash finally got round to talking about the issue on their last day. They defied robbin’ Rachel and voted to refund the benefit.
Party leaders immediately dismissed the non-binding decision. But I doubt if that will be the last word in this controversy, and ironically, delaying the vote only gave the story legs.
This controversy isn’t going away any time soon. Nor should it. The ill-timed, badly presented announcement that 10 million old folk must take an immediate hit runs counter to everything that Labour stands for.
Sir Keir Starmer promises a Hillsborough Law compelling people in authority to tell the truth. He could have observed the same rule of candour in his election manifesto.
But that would have let the cat out of the big, and therein lies the rub. We were not told. And it’s this sleight of hand that infuriates almost as much as the loss of up to £300 in pensioner households this winter.
The government will get its way, because it’s the government, as the Tories did with the abolition of free TV licences for the over 75s.
“Change has begun”? Short-change, for some. “Tough choices” – for whom?
X-rated untruths from Elon
Elon Musk, supposedly the world’s richest man, is banned from an investment summit here. He claimed on X/Twitter, which he owns, that Britain was on the brink of civil war, and planned containment camps on the Falklands for violent offenders.
Now we hear the wealthy “non-doms” who live here but don’t pay UK taxes are doing a runner to avoid Labour’s planned crackdown on their privileged status.
If the country can’t get by without their money, it’s a poor show. I’d sooner eat grass than be beholden to the likes of mad Musk and his mega-rich pals.
Not as green as they look
Fewer than one in three seven-11-year-olds know what a courgette is. I’m surprised so many do. I didn’t know what this exotic vegetable was until my 20s. And zucchini? I thought that was a motorbike.
Now I grow them, not well, but big enough to eat, and patient Mrs R cooks ‘em. How things change.
