The decision to withdraw the winter fuel payment from most pensioners was one of the first that Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, took when she entered office last summer. It was also one of the worst. Smacking of cruelty, incompetence, and poor judgement, the measure inflicted widespread suffering while making only insignificant savings for the Treasury.
According to the government’s own estimates, just £1.5 billion a year would be taken off the welfare budget, though more than 10 million elderly people would be hit by this change. In effect, Reeves’s plan meant maximum pain for some of the most vulnerable citizens in our society in return for very little fiscal gain. The policy represented vindictive penny–pinching to no real purpose.
Much of the media, cocooned in its Westminster bubble, did not initially recognise this truth. But the Daily Express, which has been at the forefront of reporting the enormous changes in the political landscape of modern Britain, immediately saw how unpopular Rachel Reeves’ scheme would be. In the finest traditions of this paper, which heroically led the campaign for British independence from the European Union, we started a new crusade to restore the winter fuel allowance. As lobby groups, MPs, experts and activists flocked to our banner, more than a million people signed a position calling on the government to reverse its stance. This powerful initiative was backed up by vivid reporting that highlighted the anxiety and hardship of so many households who were now forced to cope without the payment worth between £200 to £300 a year.
Contrary to the sneers of the Metropolitan chattering class who liked to joke that the allowance helped to bankroll wine cellars or Tuscan holidays, the payment was actually a vital lifeline to many people on fixed incomes. That is especially true because energy bills have been kept artificially high by Ed Miliband’s neurotic, destructive attachment to his net zero mission, that has given Britain among the highest electricity prices in the world.
That is why the pressure on the government became so intense. The Express had justice on its side., particularly in the highlighting the paltry savings from the withdrawal of the allowance compared to the chronic waste in other areas of government spending. The government has been hammering pensioners who had probably worked all their lives, paid their taxes and obeyed the law, yet at the same time ministers were willing to fork out £4.7 billion a year to accommodate asylum seekers, many of whom will have arrived in this country illegally.
Indeed the morality that lies behind these political priorities seems all wrong. Fraud in the welfare system costs over £9 billion a year, but ministers have been feeble in tackling this problem, just as they have allowed low productivity, bureaucratic excess and trade union bullying to distort the running of the public sector. In the same spirit, the ideological vanities of the diversity industry and the green agenda are both costing the nation a fortune, far beyond the burden of the winter fuel payment.
The folly of the allowance’s withdrawal was compounded by the determination of the Treasury to turn this policy into a virility test. With ever greater desperation, Reeves and her team boasted of their toughness in sticking to this strategy, even as the government’s unpopularity plunged to record lows. But the pretence of resilience was a sham. The Labour position was unsustainable. After the drubbing in the local elections last month the Pime Minister decided that he had no alternative but to change course, resulting in the Chanellor’s welcome announcement that all pensioners with an income of less than £35,000-a-year will once again receive the payment.
Her climbdown is a comprehensive triumph for this paper. Thanks in part to the Express, nine million pensioners will be better off this winter. It is a victory for decency over cynicism, for compassion over-exploitation. And the government is still trying to salvage something from the wreckage, Ministers claim that, even after removing eligibility for the payment from the very wealthiest, the Government will still save £450 million-a-year, though that figure is fiercely disputed by experts.
What cannot be disputed is that the government is wallowing in a mess entirely of its own making. The Cabinet should have never gone down this disastrous road in the first place and should have reversed the policy much sooner, once its impact became clear. As a result of this fiasco, Sir Kier Starmer and his front benchers look weak. Their authority is broken, their credibility is in tatters. The screeching U turn may have been the correct move now, but the lesson of history is that reversals of flagship policies always damage the government, as demonstrated by Ted Heath in the 1970s and by John Major over the devaluation of the pound in 1992. In contrast the strength of Margaret Thatcher’s political character was partly based on her famous stubbornness. “You turn if you want to. The Lady is not for turning,” she declared at the 1981 Tory Conference.
The Prime Minister is no Margaret Thatcher. He and his cabinet have proved their fallibility. As turmoil grips Westminster, and his leadership continues to take a battering, more revolts and U-turns are certain.