There are four words that will come back to haunt Sir Keir Starmer again and again after Labour’s humiliating by-election defeat to Reform UK in Runcorn: winter fuel payment cut. Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves’s decision to scrap the benefit for millions of pensioners has cost them dearly at the ballot box.
Losing Runcorn and Helsby by a wafer-thin six votes to Nigel Farage’s party is a gut punch, especially after squandering a 15,000 majority from last summer’s General Election victory. Mike Amesbury’s decision to start bashing voters – he served time in prison for that – didn’t help their cause. But a “cruel” policy decision borne out of ideological ignorance has done considerably more damage than the former MP’s fists.
Labour campaigners have bemoaned that “on every door it was the same story — winter fuel and PIP”.
It is a problem the party will face time and time again, election after election, unless Sir Keir does the honourable thing and makes a U-turn.
But this appears unlikely, with the Chancellor desperate for cash and the economy floundering.
This is undoubtedly a great result for Reform UK, which suggests its polling surge is real.
And it could also prove to be the beginning of a long nightmare for Kemi Badenoch and her Conservative Party.
