Kemi Badenoch’s chances of becoming Prime Minister are zero if the Conservatives lose the support of pensioners.
Labour understands this and wants to frame the Tory leader as the foe of older people who would dismantle the pensions triple lock.
Sir Keir Starmer’s party jumped on her comments during a radio phone-in that the Tories will “look at means-testing”.
A Labour spokesman declared: “Kemi Badenoch has put pensioners on notice – she’s going to cut your state pension.”
The Conservatives shot back, accusing Labour of “skewing her words for political gain and lying about what she said”.
The Tory press machine is right to scramble to try and put out this fire. It risks torching their chances of getting back into power.
Pensioners are the loyalist supporters of the Conservatives. The party of Margaret Thatcher was abandoned at the last election by all other age groups – and if they desert the Tories then Conservative Central Office might as well stage a closing down sale.
In the summer election, according to Ipsos research, “Labour led among every age group except those aged 65-plus”. The Conservatives won 43 per cent of this group’s vote, with Labour taking 23 per cent, Reform UK 14 per cent and the Liberal Democrats 12 per cent.
For Sir Keir, Nigel Farage and Sir Ed Davey, winning the support of pensioners is the big prize. Older voters are much more likely to vote than younger Britons, so we can expect ruthless attempts to snatch pensioners away from the Conservatives in the run-up to the next election.
Sir Keir is in no doubt about the importance retired voters. In April, he exclusively told the Express that he would keep the triple lock – which ensures the state pension keeps pace with inflation and wages and rises by at least 2.5 per cent.
In upcoming sessions of Prime Minister’s Questions, we can expect him to accuse Mrs Badenoch of plotting to dismantle this safeguard.
It takes some chutzpah for Labour to paint the Conservatives as a threat to pensioners when Chancellor Rachel Reeves has abolished universal winter fuel payments for pensioners and hiked up inheritance tax for farmers. On her watch, many bus fares have jumped in price and more pensioners are paying income tax as a result of frozen thresholds.
But Mrs Badenoch and her team need to be vigilant about their rivals’ attempts to shatter the Tory grip on this vital voting block.
The Liberal Democrats have accused her of planning to “slash the state pension” and demanded she say “how many pensioners would lose out”.
Mrs Badenoch will want to shut down these attack lines – and she may well turn her own guns on Labour.
Torsten Bell, Labour’s pensions minister, declared his opposition to the triple lock in a Resolution Foundation article in 2020. He said it was not “a sensible mechanism for pensions uprating”. He argued that a better approach would be “to replace the triple lock, and pay more attention to the contrast with working-age benefits”.
The Express fought hard to keep the triple lock in place in the lead-up to the last election. The policy has been instrumental in tackling pensioner poverty and helped millions of older citizens get through the cost of living crisis.
Champions of this defence against destitution are right to be vigilant. The triple lock does have foes.
A columnist in the Tory-supporting Spectator argued this week that “sooner or later a government really is going to have to abandon the triple lock, which is like an unexploded bomb planted beneath the state pension bill”.
The Conservatives must establish beyond doubt that they are utterly committed to continuing to raise the living standards of pensioners. By the next election, they need to have a world-class plan for social care which protects the dignity and assets of Britain’s grandparents.
If they lose pensioners, they lose the election.
