A slow u-turn

The Guardian reports that the Prime Minister has confirmed that he wants more pensioners to be eligible for winter fuel payments after a backlash against one of the most unpopular policies of the Labour government.

The paper says that Starmer indicated in the Commons that he would look again at the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance, in an attempt to win back public support and quell a growing Labour backbench rebellion over benefit cuts.

The problem is that No 10 has been unable to confirm whether the winter fuel U-turn will come into effect by this winter if announced in the autumn budget – or how many of the approximately 10 million pensioners who lost it will have it restored.

As they point out ,the decision to means test the previously universal payment was one of the first announcements by Rachel Reeves after Labour’s landslide election victory last year and has been widely blamed for the party’s collapse in public support.

I suppose it was inevitable after Labour's drubbing at the local elections that there would be a change in this policy, and yet nobody in the government is actually admitting they got it wrong, just that the fiscal position has changed.

Together with the uncertainty about this very slow, almost glacial u-turn, that lack of contrition is not going to do Labour much good and if those pensioners who need the money and lost out on the change do not get the payment this year, there may well be further electoral repercussions.