Labour is playing with fire by alienating older voters - Andrew Vine
A veteran Labour MP once told me that when out canvassing ahead of an election, he was always careful to pay particular attention to the concerns of his older constituents.
His reasoning was that they were well-informed about the issues both locally and nationally from reading newspapers and watching television bulletins, shrewd in their judgement of how frank a candidate was being with them and the most conscientious about turning out to vote.
You underrated their importance at your peril, warned the MP, who had seen younger colleagues do exactly that and live to regret it when they lost their seats or saw majorities slashed.
That is a lesson the government would do well to learn, and fast, because it is showing every sign of failing to recognise just how disgruntled older people are becoming with its performance, especially here in the north.
The council and mayoral elections earlier this month demonstrated widespread disenchantment with Labour, which suffered substantial losses to Reform and reduced majorities where it hung on to office.
And a key reason for that is an obvious loss of support among older voters. This was shown by the issue of winter fuel payments to pensioners being axed coming up on the doorsteps as Labour canvassed for votes.
If the party thought the public would have forgotten about the cut which leaves 10 million people £300 a year worse off, it is very much mistaken.
It wasn’t even hinted at in Labour’s manifesto last year, and came completely without warning as one of the new government’s first acts, prompting worries in countless households about having to choose between heating and eating.
The depth of those concerns and the seething resentment among older people about money being taken out of their pockets are illustrated by voters using their first visit to the ballot box since the general election to register what amounts to a protest.
Yet in a display of arrogance and a refusal to listen to the electorate, the government last week ruled out a U-turn on the winter fuel payment.
The Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Daisy Cooper was spot-on when she branded the government’s insistence there was no going back as “tone deaf”.
A lot of Labour MPs undoubtedly feel the same, especially in the red wall constituencies in Yorkshire and the wider north.
They know perfectly well that the cut hit hardest in the poorer areas many represent, where older people are far from wealthy and struggle to make ends meet.
Though pensioners receiving less than £11,500 a year will continue to get the winter fuel allowance, vast numbers who have only marginally more than that are losing out and face the greatest pressure on their household budgets.
It is both bad policy and lousy politics by Labour to make them even poorer and then insist that is the right thing to do.
The government added insult to injury when pressed on the matter by waffling about “going further and faster” and “turbocharging” the economy, which is just meaningless jargon that does precisely nothing to help a pensioner wondering how on earth they are going to pay the gas and electricity bills.
These older voters are anything but stupid. They know the cut in their payments – which the government said was needed to save £1.5bn – has not paid for improvements to any other aspect of their lives, such as making it easier to get an appointment with a GP or waiting less time for hospital treatment.
They voted for Labour last year in the hope that their lives would be better as a result, but have instead received a slap in the face, and not only over the cost of staying warm in the coldest months.
The issue of care costs as they age is a matter of huge concern to many people in Yorkshire, but instead of tackling it head-on, the government has kicked the can down the road with a lengthy review.
There won’t be any action to address the social care crisis until the end of this decade, at the soonest, by which time tens of thousands of Yorkshire pensioners will have exhausted their savings and maybe even had to sell their homes in order to fund any degree of dignity.
The government can point to an increase in the state pension as often as it likes, but that won’t dispel the growing sense that the welfare of older people is not as high a priority as it should be.
Embarrassing though it would be, a U-turn on winter fuel payments is not only politically expedient if Labour is to regain the trust of older people in its heartlands, but a matter of treating them with decency.