Why Labour is leaving pensioners out in the cold

There’s a new ‘nasty party’ in Westminster. Having decided to scrap winter fuel payments for 10million pensioners, it’s surely Labour that deserves the accolade. Last night, 348 Labour MPs voted to restrict this meagre but vital support for energy costs to just the very poorest pensioners. Now, only those in receipt of pension credit – that’s single pensioners with an income of less than £218.15 a week – will receive the annual payment of between £200 and £300.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves have argued they had little choice other than to make the cut. They’ve tried to convince the nation that the Tory ‘economic black hole’ is to blame. Rubbish. Since coming into office, Labour has pledged £11.6 billion for overseas ‘climate aid’ and up to £3 billion to fund pay rises for doctors and teachers. By contrast, the cut to pensioners’ winter fuel payments is expected to save just £1.4 billion. It is clearly a political decision.

It is a decision with disastrous consequences for those who will lose out. While some very wealthy pensioners no doubt saw the £300 as simply a nice lunch at the state’s expense, they are not typical. For many millions of others – particularly those who have an income just fractionally above the threshold to qualify for pension credit – it really does mean going cold this winter.

Pensioners get this additional payment because, while gas and electricity prices continue to rise, they cannot increase their earnings. And because they do not go out to work each day, pensioners spend more time at home. Older people are also more likely to suffer with health conditions and mobility issues that leave them housebound. For all the well-publicised concern about global warming, far more people in the UK die during cold spells than during heatwaves. According to the Centre for Ageing Better, 9,000 entirely avoidable deaths occur in cold homes every year. Shamefully, they are often met with a ‘shrug of indifference’. It seems almost certain that more such deaths will occur this winter.

It is impossible to imagine any group other than pensioners receiving such a devastating blow. Their concerns seem to be of little interest to the new government. Older people are more likely to vote, but are less likely to vote Labour. Targeting them for cuts is made easier by the widespread myth that OAPs are all wealthy. Having benefited from rising house prices and decades of economic growth, the argument goes, they are now selfishly squatting in large properties while millennials struggle to get on the housing ladder.

In reality, a growing proportion of older adults live in private rented accommodation, some having to share houses and negotiate unpredictable rent rises. Unlike transgender children or migrants or drag queens, pensioners – particularly working-class pensioners – are simply not a fashionable group that the political class wants to defend.

The popularity of the insult ‘OK Boomer!’ exposes the way older people are ridiculed for being out of touch with today’s woke language and values. For those on the left, pensioners are selfish and backward. For younger people on the right, the old represent a ‘gerontocracy’ and act as a drain on younger generations. Pensioners are a political football, to be picked up when useful and dropped and ignored when not. How else to explain the hypocrisy of Labour MPs such as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, who made a big show of defending fuel payments while in opposition, only to change tack when in government?

Unfortunately, the hypocrisy in the debate over winter fuel payments does not stop at parliamentary shenanigans. Reeves, the brains behind the cut, claimed a whopping £4,400 on parliamentary expenses to pay her own energy bills before axing the poxy £300 payment to pensioners.

More galling still is the hypocrisy of those now leading the backlash against the cut. There’s the faux-bafflement of Guardian journalists and the confected outrage of Labour-luvvies like Carol Vorderman, who is currently busy demanding an apology from Starmer himself, as if her own hurt feelings are the real issue here.

‘How could the Labour Party do this?’, they howl. But these bandwagon-jumpers forget that the only reason fuel subsidies are needed is because gas and electricity prices are eye-wateringly high. Although pensioners will suffer more than most, many adults of all ages struggle to afford energy costs and will go cold this winter.

That fuel prices are so unaffordable is also down to political choices. Green levies make up about 11 per cent of each household’s bill on average. VAT adds another five per cent. These taxes are deliberately intended to make us think twice about turning up the thermostat in the interests of reaching Net Zero.

Meanwhile, successive governments have failed to invest in nuclear power. Labour is now even considering scrapping a proposed plant in Wales. Fracking has also been banned since 2019 and Labour wants to impose an immediate ban on North Sea gas and oil exploration. While we are dependent upon unreliable solar and wind power and supplemented with expensive foreign fuel imports, energy prices in the UK will remain needlessly high.

The decision to scrap winter fuel payments for pensioners is shameful. Millions of older people will be colder, poorer and more miserable this winter. But activists who smeared the elderly as a drain on the young, or who cheered on the move to costly, inefficient green energy have no right to complain. They are every bit as responsible for this dire situation as the Labour MPs who backed the cut in parliament. The elderly deserve so much better.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at MCC Budapest. Read her new report, Sexualising Children? The Rise of Comprehensive Sexuality Education, here.