Fuelling a Winter of Dissent

A funny thing or three happened at high noon on Wednesday, September 4th at the first PMQs of the new parliamentary session. First, Sir Keir Starmer kept forgetting he’s now prime minister and three times called Rishi Sunak ‘prime minister’. While Sunak, refreshed from his California sunshine break and safe in the knowledge he won’t have the thankless task of leading a traumatised by electoral defeat Tory party beyond November 2nd, produced his sharpest Commons performance in months, apparently relishing firing verbal bullets at his successor far more than he ever did ducking them as PM himself.

Of course, Sunak was helped by being able to target his Leader of the Opposition attack lines on the issue that threatens to really put Keir Starmer on the ropes for the first time since his landslide election victory. Axing the £300 winter fuel allowance for around 10 million pensioners.

With many Labour backbenchers deeply unhappy at the policy, the court of public opinion predominantly hostile and the right-wing newspapers desperately relishing the scent of welcome blood, cricket lover Sunak probably felt he was fleetingly on an easy wicket. At least he knew he was guaranteed a good review in those right-wing papers who not so long ago were ripping into him for the ‘folly’ of calling that early election and leading his government to crushing, demoralising humiliation.

Suddenly, the much diminished ranks of Tory MPs at times managed to make more noise cheering on Sunak than the vastly greater number of Labour MPs did supporting their prime minister. Even as most of Starmer’s front bench dutifully nodded their heads and called out encouragement as he defended his chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision, repeating her £22m ‘black hole’ mantra, deputy PM Angela Rayner noticeably sat silent, still and stony-faced.

Labour unease

There was no shortage of glum faces either on Labour’s backbenches. Even a few weeks into a landslide victory, they aren’t impervious to their constituency email boxes, the snap polls and the media headlines.

Initially, Starmer was hostile to putting the winter fuel cut policy to a Commons debate and vote, but such has been the backlash scale that he’s relented, albeit with a non-binding vote. That said, the September 10th debate / vote is set to be a serious and potentially embarrassing test of his leadership. While the size of Labour’s majority removes any risk of defeat, the symbolism matters.

As I told GB News where I pop up regularly as an alternative left of centre commentator, I reported my sources suggest there are around 40 Labour MPs considering rebelling, either by voting against or abstaining. If that happened, could the prime minister afford to do what he did to the seven who recently rebelled against Labour’s refusal to lift the 2-child benefit cap by removing the whip and forcing them to sit as independents for the next six months? His political and media opponents would opportunistically seize the moment. For my part, on air, I found myself in the conflicted position of defending the ‘black hole’ argument in principle while questioning whether the OAP winter fuel cut was the right combat weapon of choice by Starmer / Reeves. I also advocated an idea floated by the respected veteran former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson that a sliding scale fuel payment system rather like income tax was far preferable to a rigid, arbitrary cut off point.

How much a Daily Mail splash of 3rd September headlined, ‘Now Labour Are Running Scared Over Winter Fuel Backlash’ with sub-deck ‘Starmer’s MPs panic over cash blow for 10m OAPs-but he STILL won’t hold vote’ influenced the Starmer U-turn, who knows for sure?

Right-wing press view

But the Mail, which has led the attack wave along with the Express and ‘Torygraph’, threw down the gauntlet further by focusing on Keir Starmer warning his MPs just before parliament returned that he ‘wouldn’t tolerate dissent’ on the winter fuel issue and would be ‘really tough’ on internal opposition. Clearly the Mail, with its Trumpesque mindset about electoral defeat, is geared up for fiercely condemning Starmer if, as seems almost certain, he stands firm with the option of branding him ‘weak’ and ‘cowardly’ if he retreats.

The same issue of the Mail predictably featured a full frontal assault by its venomous star columnist Richard Littlejohn headlined ‘Why does Labour hate older people?’ and beginning ‘First they stole your winter fuel allowance. Now they’re coming for your railcard’ (a reference to a rumoured but unconfirmed plan to ditch or devalue the discount travel card for pensioners).

While on the morning of Sunak’s planned PMQs deployment of the winter fuel attack card, the Mail devoted a double page spread to shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt claiming, ‘Labour’s picking the pockets of pensioners’ with the sub-deck ‘Tory voting OAPs being punished with winter fuel move’.

Left-wing press view

But the newspaper unease isn’t restricted to the Tory titles. My old Labour-loyalist ship the Mirror (with no shortage of modest means pensioner readers) has been walking a tightrope between defending the government’s £22bn ‘black hole’ argument while balancing it with plenty of space given to Labour MPs opposing the policy and to the criticisms and dire warnings from charities like Age UK. You sensed a sigh of relief in the editor’s office at the timely leak that the state pension could rise by more than £400 a year in 2025!

Over at The Guardian, similar agonising, with plenty of hostile readers’ letters condemning the Starmer / Reeves winter fuel policy, leading columnist Polly Toynbee defended means testing the winter fuel allowance while conceding its unpopularity but arguing, ‘it is right to take it from well-off pensioners’ and arguing the Starmer government correct to prioritise making sure entitled OAPs who aren’t claiming credits due to pride or lack of awareness are helped instead of maintaining a universal benefit. Yes, we’ve all seen some of those crass social media posts by well-off pensioners quipping about using their winter fuel 300 quid to buy a nice crate of vino.

Back to Toynbee confidently predicting (hoping?) that Rachel Reeves’ first budget at the end of October will ‘take from the wealthiest and trim their tax reliefs, while protecting vulnerable people and public services’, she also asserted ‘History will prove Rachel Reeves right’.

The Toynbee column was headlined, ‘The anti-Labour right wing press is on the warpath. If you wanted this government, defend it’. Certainly she didn’t spare the Mail, Express and Telegraph from her wrath over their ‘exploitation’ of the winter fuel debate.

But, to its credit, dissenting voices are being given space to disagree. In a September 4th guest column by Labour supporting former Bank of England monetary committee member, and economist Professor Danny Blanchflower, he wrote: ‘Defending the government’s decision to radically restrict winter fuel payments, Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, said cutting the payments was a necessary measure to avoid a run on the pound (it wasn’t). Last week Keir Starmer told the country that things were ‘worse than we ever imagined’ and that the public should prepare for ‘short term pain for long-term good’. In other words, the government is preparing us for unnecessary cuts’.

Interestingly, the Blanchflower column was headlined ‘I believed Starmer and Reeves were too smart to repeat austerity. It appears I was wrong’. It went on: ‘New governments usually come into power offering hope and a break with the past. This one is squandering the opportunity for a fresh start’.

Even the Guardian’s brilliantly acerbic columnist John Crace produced a parliamentary sketch (4th September) that Rachel Reeves is unlikely to cut out and frame on the wall of her Treasury office. The headline, ‘Dressed all in black, the Ministering Angel of Death relishes telling us things are terrible’, summed it up. Then, again, maybe, just maybe, the chancellor in her current frame of mind might actually reach for the scissors and clear a treasured space on the wall after all.

In his sketch, Crace also warned Rachel Reeves, who he also dubbed, ‘The Prophetess of Doom’, ‘The rebellion is still at the polite stage, but it’s there nonetheless. Cracks are emerging already. The honeymoon period is over. So soon.’

Well, it might not play well with Starmer and Reeves but there are plenty of Labour MP contacts of mine who share the Blanchflower diagnosis (including very privately a couple of ministers) and are already quaking over what they see as the leadership overdosing on gloom and dispensing with the sunshine of optimism and positivity.

Just how many of them express those sentiments when the winter fuel furore is put to debate and a symbolic vote next week remains to be seen. Perhaps a bold backbencher might throw Alan Johnson’s name into the mix?

But both Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves would do well to brace themselves for a political and media mauling and what might resemble something of a pyrrhic victory when it comes to the vote.