Labour has scored an own-goal with cuts to winter fuel payments - Jayne Dowle

Do the hundreds of MPs - including all three Labour members representing their constituents in my own town of Barnsley - who voted to scrap winter fuel payments, really think that all but the very poorest pensioners are like my old friend Mr Claret?

Of course they aren’t. And the likes of Dan Jarvis (Labour North), Stephanie Peacock (Labour South) and Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) know this all too well. They see pensioners struggling in their own surgeries and meet them on street walkabouts.

How can they now look them in the eye, especially as it’s emerged that Downing Street did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people?

So effectively, all those Labour MPs have voted on a matter of life or death – The Centre For Ageing Better says 9,000 UK deaths are caused by cold homes each year - which has not been fully researched. And perhaps they wonder why people are angry.

But we can all play devil’s advocate.

I’ve also heard of active pensioners with decent public services pensions using their winter fuel payment for holidays to warmer climes. Some spend it treating their grandchildren to nice Christmas presents. I’ve heard of others too, who feel guilty because they don’t need the benefit, introduced by Labour in 1997, but claim it and donate it all to charity every year.

And I also know pensioners that are too terrified to even switch on lights. To cook a basic meal. Who sit in several layers of clothing all day, wrapped in rugs, because they dare not switch the heating on. And these are not the poorest pensioners in receipt of income-linked benefits such as pension credit, and who will still be entitled to either £200 or £300, depending on age.

These are people like my own parents, both 80, who have worked hard all their lives, budget carefully and manage as best they can. I’m worried that it’s not just the physical effects of cold weather, which leads to so many emergency hospital admissions, but the mental stress of worrying about money. And then politicians make concerned faces about the national mental health crisis.

The heartbreak is that in a cynical attempt to plug the so-called £22bn ‘black hole’ in public finances, the Prime Minister and his obdurate Chancellor, Leeds MP Rachel Reeves, have kicked them all in the teeth. And for what, to save an estimated £1.3bn between 2024/25 and £1.5bn the following year?

This is a Labour government, for goodness sake. Why not add a percentage onto the very top rate of tax paid by the super-rich instead? Have they ever spoken to tech entrepreneur Phil White, spokesperson for Patriotic Millionaires UK, a group of super-wealthy individuals who are actually volunteering to pay more tax in the name of equality?

Only one Labour member, Jon Trickett, MP for the former mining town of Hemsworth, in West Yorkshire, stood firm and refused to back the government in a Commons vote on the policy last Tuesday, forced by the Conservatives. A further 52 Labour MPs abstained, some citing questionable excuses such as dental appointments.

The government – and I stress the importance of constituency MPs here, because they are in the direct firing line - must acknowledge the backlash is going to be hugely damaging, especially so early in this government’s term.

In a charity shop with my daughter the other day, the middle-aged woman on the till was absolutely fuming. “I am livid,” she informed us, even though we were standing quietly, not remotely mentioning politics. “This Labour government is disgusting. It’s not me I’m worrying about, it’s people like this lady here.” And she pointed to an elderly woman with a shopping trolley, queuing up behind us, who had a second-hand blanket folded over her arm.

I nodded in sympathy, and as we left, she called after us, “I’m just glad I voted Reform.”

Nigel Farage’s party put the frighteners on Labour in towns like mine at the General Election, gaining around a third of all votes in both Barnsley North and Barnsley South. Labour MPs were already in no position to take anything for granted.