'I have long poured scorn on universal benefits - but Reeves is penalising pensioners living on modest pensions'

I have long since advocated not giving the Christmas Bonus or the winter fuel allowance to those in the higher tax bracket and called upon people like me to give ours away.

So, I would have been quite happy if Rachel Reeves had announced that higher taxpayers would not get the fuel allowance but instead, she has drawn the line at those who get pension credits, which penalises the large number of pensioners who do not quite fall into that bracket but who live on very modest pensions.

I could even have swallowed it if she had said the fuel allowance was automatic for all those on Pension Credit, not available for higher taxpayers but payable to standard taxpayers on application.

Indeed, in the early days of this allowance, you did have to apply.

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There was no means-testing and payment was automatic upon application, but it did mean that those who considered themselves too well off or independent to need it did not apply.

This was the case in my own household when my mother lived with me and was therefore eligible for the allowance, but we always agreed that it would be wrong to apply given my own income plus her pension from my late father’s employers.

Excluding all those struggling on income levels not far above the Pension Credit line is cruel and cynical. The intriguing question however is what will the myriad Labour backbenchers who disagree with it do?

Keir Starmer reacted to a very small rebellion of a mere seven of his MPs over the two-child benefit cap by suspending them and thereby ending the time-honoured convention which respects conscientious dissent on the part of backbenchers.

Ministers have always had to resign if they rebelled against the government, but others were always considered free to do so unless the issue was a confidence vote.

This time the rebellion is likely to be much more widespread.

So, is Keir Starmer getting ready to suspend half his parliamentary party?

Somehow, I doubt it but how will he justify the different approach? It is likely to be an early example of his well-known capacity for vacillation.

Meanwhile many of the elderly will dread the onset of Winter.

Welcome to socialist Britain. No Tory government could have got away with it.

So, what next? The miserable little £10 Christmas bonus? Or the triple lock? Or the pension itself?

The beneficiaries of this robbery of the elderly are the doctors who bag a 22 per cent pay rise and other public sector workers whose unions have always been Labour’s friend, but Reeves will probably find that will merely encourage more wild pay demands, not fewer.

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Already this government has thrown in the towel with immigration, dropping the Rwanda plan but not putting anything in its place.

They resort to an amnesty which is another way of saying they have given up distinguishing the genuine from those playing the system.

What on earth can that do but encourage rather than discourage the boats?

If, as seems likely, it similarly gives up on controlling the public sector pay bill then Britain will once again become the sick man of Europe and last time it took a Thatcher to sort that out. And next time? Farage maybe.