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September 9, 2024 - 7:00am
An extended leadership contest has done the Conservatives no favours when it comes to providing effective opposition in the House of Commons, but they are still managing to cause trouble. A well-placed motion means that the Government now faces a “binding” Parliamentary vote tomorrow on whether or not to means-test the winter fuel allowance, bringing it into line with Pension Credit and other benefits aimed at the poorest households.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had hoped to avoid a vote altogether, given that such a policy change would not normally require one. Yet, rather than backing down, the Prime Minister has hardened his rhetoric over the past few days. As well as publicly arguing that his government must be prepared to be unpopular, he has gone so far as to claim that Labour was “elected first and foremost to sort out the public finances”. The Chancellor has “the total backing of Number 10 in doing this”, he added.
Despite a growing chorus of voices on the Left demanding a U-turn, the Prime Minister is doing the opposite — and that shouldn’t be surprising. Had there not been a vote, Starmer would have retained more room for manoeuvre. Had he and Reeves decided to change their minds about the winter fuel allowance, it would have been their decision, taken from a position of strength, for which they would have received the credit.
A vote changes everything. The Government’s credibility is now on the line: if the Prime Minister couldn’t face down his restive backbenchers a mere two months after winning one of the largest landslides in the history of British politics, his authority would have evaporated. He has little choice but to confront the rebels.
This is especially important because, for all the sound and fury, this clash over winter fuel payments is just a skirmish. Reeves is clearly rolling the pitch for a miserable Budget, and there will be more miserable Budgets to come. Five long and difficult years stretch out ahead of the Government — and it is increasingly clear that Labour had not prepared for how hard things would be.
Starmer won his historic majority with a very thin manifesto; prior to the election, Reeves and Jeremy Hunt were fighting over an extremely narrow sliver of economic policy territory. They hoped that simply not being the Conservatives would be enough to deliver them to office, and so it proved.
But the price of that strategy must now be paid. Unlike in 2010, the Prime Minister has not prepared the voters for difficult times, nor won their — albeit reluctant — acceptance for any sort of austerity. Nor have his MPs been elected on a manifesto full of clear commitments to do difficult things, normally a very important tool for imposing discipline when times get tough.
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SubscribeHow long before the U turn and the ‘we have listened’ hyperbole?
I’ve pencilled in May 2025 local elections as an ‘interesting’ time. If the opposition parties play their cards right we could end up with a majority Labour national government at odds with a majority of unaligned local councils.
I imagine there will be Labour people plotting the removal of Uncomfortable Kier.
Cut foreign aid for starters, scrap ‘green’ initiatives and stop pointless public works such as the £10Bn lower Thames tunnel crossing, cut all immigrant hotel accommodation. There, very difficult decisions that don’t punish those who have invested their lives in our country, paid taxes, brought up families and lived law abiding lives. However this bullying and intimidation of elected MPs is consistent with the persecution of all who disagree . What next, declaring dissenters as extremist?
All excellent suggestions. Sit back and watch while labour do the opposite and penalise those very people you’ve identified
All of this discussion about a winter payment is a blind. The real culprit is the crippling energy policy, which is going through without comment. It is a major achievement for Labour to get this catastrophic, disastrous, energy policy through without anyone noticing, without any dissenters at all.
Wait now for the power cuts!!
“…Five long and difficult years stretch out ahead of the Government…”
I’m sorry, for whom exactly are the difficult years about to stretch out? The torturers or the tortured?
Sadly, both.
The arguments that are being made against the Winter Fuel Payment are in fact arguments against the universal state pension. Why should Mick Jagger get that, either? I remember people around the Blair Government who wanted to means test it. Here we are again.
But the Government has chosen to means test the Winter Fuel Payment by Statutory Instrument, which means that while neither House of Parliament can amend it, either could just annul it. Assuming that it will have passed the House of Commons on Tuesday, then on Wednesday, Ros Altmann will invite the House of Lords to throw it out. That House would be perfectly within its rights to do so, and it should.
Not before time, the trade unions are coming out fighting against the attempt, either opportunistic or innumerate, to blame them for this, so their many veterans on the red benches should vote for the fatal motion. All of the Lords Spiritual should obviously turn up to do so. The report of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is devastating, and every member of that Committee should vote accordingly, including the three Labour ones, one of whom was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party until 2019. And every hereditary peer should vote to ask Keir Starmer how he intended to retaliate.
But it really should not be the job of the Lords to do this. Yet it is wholly unsurprising that it should be. More members of the Socialist Campaign Group voted to keep the two-child benefit cap than voted to lift it, including Clive Lewis, who had made such a fuss about the Oath of Allegiance. “The language of priorities is the religion of Socialism.” From the wider Parliamentary Labour Party, Emma Lewell-Buck backed down and voted with the Government, and Rosie Duffield contracted Covid-19. This time, Lewell-Buck has expressed her concerns, but not how she intended to vote, if at all. Duffield has already said that she would be abstaining. Does she think that Starmer might one day make her a Minister? He never will, you know.
Unlike the vote on the two-child benefit cap, this will be legislative. If the House rejected this means test, then it would not become law. It has precisely one opportunity to do so. At the very least, all eyes, not to say Ayes, must be on Neil Duncan-Jordan and on the other Labour signatories to his Early Day Motion 115: Rachael Maskell (although she is saying that she is going to abstain), Jon Trickett, Lewis, Nadia Whittome, Kim Johnson, Simon Opher, Chris Hinchliff, Mary Kelly Foy, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Unless they voted against this, then how could they ever again expect to be taken seriously?
There are also the hardline pro-Israeli elements of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We may regard the recent restriction on arms to Israel as pitiful, but it is anathema to them. This is their chance to take a stand, and to do so in a way that would be well-received by their Constituency Labour Parties. We had all expected their éminence rouge to be made a Whip, and no doubt so had he. Well, a Whip is as a Whip does.
In the summer of 1992, official opinion was that the Conservative Party was going to be in power forever. Yet all of that came crashing down on 16 September. From then on, the Major Government was in its last days. Those dragged on for four and a half years. But everyone knew that they were its last days. In ascending order of likelihood, the Starmer Government is about to be defeated, or to be forced into a humiliating compromise, or to win a thoroughly pyrrhic victory that caused its never very great popularity to collapse. Of a freezing pensioner who had narrowly failed to meet the means test, one death this winter would be enough, and there is bound to be that. On Tuesday, this Government looks set to enter its last days. Stretched out over almost an entire Parliament. But still obviously its last days.
Labour Left virtue signalling again.
The £400 increase in the pension will not come into effect until April, four thosand deaths later according to the Labour Party’s own figures. Knife crime is a serious problem, but it is not going to kill four thousand people before the turn of the financial year.
This would be social murder no less than at Grenfell Tower, itself even worse than the arson of an hotel with intent to endanger life, since life was in fact lost. I am very glad that Thomas Birley has been dealt with speedily. The same should apply to those responsible for the Grenfell Tower fire, since we know who they were.
For his callous remarks about that fire, Tony Blair should be expelled from the Labour Party, removed from the Privy Council, stripped of his knighthood, and disbarred. For that fire itself, those named in Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report should be arrested and charged forthwith.
That there has been no such arrest or charge is an example of the real two-tier justice system. Another is that no one has been arrested and charged in relation to PPE. Everyone who had been in the VIP lane should now be arrested in grounds of reasonable suspicion. Once that had been lifted, then each of them would be released.
But there is a profoundly anti-democratic side to all of this, with Alan Milburn reprising his role as the great privatiser of the NHS, only this time with a pecuniary interest. Where are the minutes of the meetings to which Wes Streeting has taken him along? To which documents has Milburn had access? Does he, or does he not, have a pass for the Department of Health and Social Care?
Similarly, where are the minutes of the meeting at which Starmer and Rachel Reeves decided to means test the Winter Fuel Payment? Until we see those, then I say that their claim to have done so only after they had seen the books in office is a lie. Prove me wrong. Prove a lot of people wrong, in fact. Ian Lavery, Diane Abbott, Grahame Morris, Andy McDonald, Rosie Duffield and Chris Webb have all signed EDM 155 today. They, and the rest of them, should walk the walk through the correct Division Lobby tomorrow. Or never talk the talk again.