Stripping winter fuel payments from pensioners is Labour’s biggest political mistake - Royston Smith

The cold is particularly difficult for older people to deal with. Pensioners naturally spend longer at home than the population in general. Very often they are unable to get out.

In fact, we talk quite rightly about loneliness being as dangerous to older people as some health conditions. Under Rachel Reeves' cynical plan, some pensioners will now be lonely and cold.

A very thoughtful and well-researched contribution from Dr Caroline Johnson MP, in the House of Commons during the Winter Fuel Payment debate, said, “It is important that they (Labour MPs) understand that when they take Winter Fuel Payments away from vulnerable people, some elderly people will die.”

Labour MPs sat and listened as she laid out the effects of cold on older people and still made their choice.

Labour has decided that pensioners, who may be asset-rich but cash poor, should have the safety net, designed to keep them warm during long harsh winters, removed from them, despite knowing that energy costs this winter are increasing.

This has landed very badly and Labour will have to find a way to mitigate what they have done.

Virtually overnight they have destroyed what trust there was with Britain’s pensioners. Older people haven’t felt as under attack as this since Gordon Brown increased the state pension by a derisory 75 pence per week back in 1999, the lowest increase since annual upratings to pensions began.

So what is it about pensioners that Labour dislikes so much? It looks very much like they chose to punish them because they believe older people vote for the Conservatives.

Perhaps that is an unfair conclusion to draw but there is no doubt that it looks very much like that.

Labour had been out of office for 14 years and one of their first acts in returning to government is to very publicly attack a group of people who are on fixed incomes.

It is Labour who go on and on about a cost of living crisis, but in one stroke of the Chancellor’s pen makes things so much worse for pensioners. It was a deliberate act. It is not an oversight or a mistake.

There was no impact assessment, and if there was, they are refusing to publish it. It is vindictive and many Labour MPs know it and will have to live with the consequences.

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Sir Keir Starmer sent his MPs out to defend the cut by saying they had no choice.

That is nonsense. They always have a choice.

They could have chosen not to give Junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise with no productivity requirement.

They could have chosen not to increase train driver’s pay by nearly as much as a state pensioner’s total income.

They could have chosen not to keep on tens of thousands of additional civil servants that were employed only to get us through the pandemic.

Labour had plenty of choices. This was a choice they wanted to make, not needed to make, and it is cruel.

On the bright side, at least the Starmer’s won’t have to trouble themselves with worrying about heating their taxpayer-funded flat in Downing Street. Their biggest challenge is deciding which free outfit to wear next.

Perhaps Labour donor, Lord Waheed Alli, will donate a couple of nice coats to keep them warm as we approach winter.

A luxury many of Britain’s pensioners will not now be able to afford.