Winter fuel payment: Labour's means tested move - calculated and courageous or cold and callous?

A representative and far from exhaustive inventory of undertakings; from industrial relations to housing stock shortages, cost-of-living crises to state school funding issues. Without wanting to be flippant about it all, clearly, something has to give.

If the letters bag to this newspaper has been anything to go by, the difficult decision to move towards a means-tested method of paying the winter fuel allowance has been received with mixed opinion.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has come in for bruising brick-bats, yes, from political opponents and opportunists, but also from those pensioners likely to feel the icy pinch of winter the most.

On the flip side, there have been honest pragmatists who, quite rightly, point to those pensioners who are mightily well off, do not need the winter fuel supplement and very often would prefer it to be put to better use. The Prime Minister and his Chancellor have made a tough, calculated call, and to a great extent had won confidence in doing so; confidence that maybe, just maybe the nation has at its helm leaders courageous enough to run a gauntlet of criticism in their quest to right a blizzard of material wrongs.

What is clear is this: their calculations when it comes to the triple-lock insulating penioners from their workings out had better be on point, because we’ll keep their feet to the fire on this one.