Diane Abbott warns Keir Starmer winter fuel payment like Thatcher's poll tax and 'she was gone in a year'
Reductions to winter fuel payments are cutting through to the public like Margaret Thatcher's poll tax, veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott is warning.
She argued that the political damage of the deeply controversial policy was not worth the savings to rebuild Britain's dire public finances.
Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are believed to be now reconsidering the policy, and whether the restrictions on the payments could be made less stringent.
'Remember Mrs Thatcher, the poll tax, it just cut through, it wasn't the worse thing she ever did in my opinion..it cut through,' Ms Abbott, who was first elected to Parliament in 1987, told ITV's Good Morning Britain.
'I think winter fuel is like that.
'It could be Keir Starmer's poll tax and you know she tried to drive through the poll tax and she was gone within the year.'
Labour MP Diane Abbott believes the winter fuel allowance must be restored in full.She tells @susannareid100 and Richard how the winter fuel allowance cuts has been the issue that 'has been raised on every doorstep.' pic.twitter.com/HvImkzZQMj
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) May 21, 2025
She added: 'For the money that Rachel got out of it, it wasn't worth it.'
Labour suffered heavy losses in the May 1 local elections, and lost the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, as Nigel Farage's Reform UK surged amid anger at the cuts to winter fuel payments.
Ms Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington who party chiefs tried to stop from standing at the last election, also slammed Sir Keir's 'island of strangers' speech on immigration as 'very damaging' to the PM, claiming it had a 'little hint of Enoch Powell'.
No10 rejects this claim.
She praised the PM for his international achievements but warned that Labour MPs and voters were 'worried that Keir is moving away from Labour values'.
Dozens of Labour MPs are pushing for the cuts to winter fuel payments to at least be partially reversed, rather than them being restricted to people getting Pension Credit or similar benefits.
Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will press on with Labour's £5 billion plans for welfare cuts on Wednesday, arguing that reform is needed to make sure the system survives.
She is expected to say there is a 'risk' the welfare state would collapse without the proposed changes, which include tightening the eligibility criteria for the main disability benefit in England, the personal independence payment (Pip).
Restricting Pip would slash benefits for about 800,000 people, while the sickness-related element of universal credit is also set to be cut.
The package of measures is aimed at reducing the number of working-age people on sickness benefits, which grew during the pandemic and has remained high since.
The Government hopes the proposals can save £5 billion a year by the end of the decade.
'Unless we ensure public money is focused on those with the greatest need and is spent in ways that have the best chance of improving people's lives, the risk is the welfare state won't be there for people who really need it in the future,' Ms Kendall was expected to say in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.
But some 100 Labour MPs, more than a quarter of the party's parliamentary numbers, are reported to have signed a letter urging ministers to scale back welfare cuts under consideration.
In a separate, earlier letter, 42 MPs said the cuts were 'impossible to support'.
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