Don't be fooled by this U-turn: Labour still have pensioners in their sights
Neither side covered itself in glory during the dark Brexit years. But a particular low point, burned in my memory, was the way Remainers abandoned respect for democracy by implying the result should be disregarded because Leavers were overwhelmingly past their sell-by date.
Remember Sir Vince Cable doubting the validity of the vote because it had been 'the choice of the older generation'? Or when Suella Braverman's 2019 tweet of a constituency meeting with the caption 'no sign of Project Fear tonight' prompted Jess Phillips to sneer: 'Sure looks like a representative sample'? (The median age of a Fareham resident, by the way, is 50-64 and 96 per cent identify as white.)
Undaunted by past shamelessness, some Remainers are again trotting out these familiar tropes. They're now emboldened once more as the Prime Minister does their bidding, dragging us back to the EU's unique form of modern slavery. Before the election, the Prime Minister repeatedly expressed how deeply he cared about Britain's elderly. 'I've met pensioners who have no idea how they'll heat their homes' in winter, he smooched in 2022. Just days before the general election, he insisted pensioners had 'nothing to fear' from a Labour government. Tell me another.
For what did two-tier Keir do, the moment he skipped through the door of No 10? He took the winter fuel allowance off 10 million pensioners. It was retirees who kept his party out of power for 14 years, and who won the EU referendum for Leave.
Don't be fooled by Starmer's U-turn this week: this wasn't a Damascene conversion, but a PM bowing to the demands of the tetchy – and mobilising – Labour Left. After all, it was only last month that Starmer assured the Liaison Committee of his commitment to extend voting to 16 year olds, a move that will further dilute the influence of the old who, for all their voting power, are under-represented in what may well be our youngest ever Parliament. Around 3-4 per cent of MPs are over-70, against 17 per cent of the voting age population in that bracket. Where are the Gladstones and Churchills?
The Labour establishment still seems to see pensioners as, quoting former HMRC supremo Sir Edward Troup, old 'codgers' who are 'under-taxed'. This attitude is often justified by the perceived unfairness of the triple lock, which now costs taxpayers around £124 billion a year. But however indefensible the mechanism may be, no other benefit is weaponised to lambast its recipients in this way. We should means test 'free' childcare, for instance, but we don't pillory the middle-class parents who use it.
Labour has just hoofed elder care reform into the ever-longer grass. And what of the NHS? As aged patients expire in A&E corridors, Wes Streeting blathers about AI and a 'prevention' revolution while Kim Leadbeater and her supporters try to create a National Death Service. Meanwhile Rachel Reeves is apparently itching to impose a cap on cash Isas, though it's not a great idea for octogenarians to be investing heavily in equities which are constantly zooming up and down in value.
Following the October Budget, pensions are now subject to inheritance tax, meaning elderly savers are no longer safe in the knowledge that if they die before drawing it all, whatever remains will go to their loved ones. And whatever your views on the Waspi campaign, the proposed compensation package was rejected last December by the very same politicians who once thundered about the 'injustice' the nasty Tories had perpetrated.
Older people are increasingly living in a world of their own, detached from the mainstream. Retirement homes shut them away from the world. Those still able to get about find that supermarkets are swapping staffed tills for self-checkouts, leaving older customers with no one to talk to. Landlines are being disconnected, mail deliveries reduced. Banks and Post Offices are seemingly inaccessible. We are drifting towards age apartheid, with the Government exacerbating rather than mitigating it.
Many over-65s grew old without the advantages that today's young demand: affordable education, 'mental health' support, job security. And it wasn't old people who gummed up our housing market, inflated university fees, limited job opportunities. That was the fault of successive governments who chose to capitulate to vested interests and prioritise short-term gains over everybody's longer-term prosperity.
The current lot appear less interested in intergenerational fairness than intergenerational punishment. It's entirely possible to support the young without sacrificing granny. But Starmer has a score to settle.
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