It was indeed a pyrrhic victory. Last week, this column ended using those words to forecast how the winter fuel payment vote would turn out for the prime minister and his iron chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
How the Guardian saw it
The morning after, it was how the Labour supporting Guardian began its main leader by declaring: “Sir Keir Starmer’s victory in a Commons vote to cut winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners was a pyrrhic one. The British prime minister defeated his internal critics — at a price. It turns out that many Labour MPs have an issue with depriving pensioners who struggle to pay their energy bills of help worth up to £300. More than 50 current and suspended Labour MPs did not vote with the government. One veteran left winger, Jon Trickett, a former aide to Gordon Brown, voted against it. Some ministers were permitted to stay away. But scores of Labour parliamentarians — from all wings of the party — conspicuously refused to back their own government.”
Despite desperate efforts by Number Ten spin doctors to suggest the abstentions didn’t add up to a blindingly obvious revolt, it reeked of the prime minister seeking to duck a tricky disciplinary dilemma by not suspending the abstainers the way he did the seven who recently revolted by voting against the government’s refusal to lift the 2-child benefit cap.
The front page, headlined, “PM faces calls to aid poorest as winter fuel cut approved”, made it clear how much pressure Rachel Reeves and her boss will be under to find some face-saving, future and bigger revolt averting measures in the October 30 budget to mitigate the impact of the winter fuel allowance cut.
Elsewhere in the Guardian, left leaning columnist Rafael Behr warned: “Dissent is deferred, not dissolved. Labour MPs have been told not to expect any retreat from austere decisions, but a prolonged backlash could still necessitate palliation for the pensioners most in need.” The paper’s brilliant political sketch writer and in-house satirist, John Crace, waded in with: “There were plenty of empty spaces on the Labour benches. Getting their nails done. A failure in childcare. Attending their own funerals. Picking on pensioners wasn’t what many Labour MPs thought would be required of them during their first big test in parliament. The vote was never in doubt. Jon Trickett was the only Labour MP to vote against, but 52 others abstained. Including eight ministers, who presumably had their absences authorised. But how many of the others had made their excuses to the whips and how many were taking a principled stand was unclear. More will be revealed.”
Well, I can vouchsafe from my own contacts that three ministers were absent (by private agreement) because they couldn’t stomach voting for the government but couldn’t be seen to abstain and trigger special media attention.
The extraordinary media story of the Great Winter Fuel Dissent is how much it has united newspapers on both sides of the political divide. OK, some Tory titles have cynically and opportunistically seized on it to try and inflict damage on a Starmer government not yet through its first 100 days. But they have also sensed the current zeitgeist on this issue.
If Starmer doesn’t suspend Trickett the way the child benefit cap rebels were treated he’ll open himself to charges off inconsistency from critics. A defiant Trickett, MP for Normanton in West Yorkshire insists, ‘I could not in good conscience vote to make my constituents poorer.’
While young Coventry Labour MP and Corbyn ally Zara Sultana, already suspended over her child benefit cap revolt, accused Rachel Reeves of embarking on an Osborne redolent ‘Austerity 2.0’.
My old Mirror home opted for a Strictly Come Dancing story as front page lead with a cross reference headed “COLD WAR...OAPs winter fuel payments axed despite backlash, see Page9”. While a nervy leader suggested “Keir Starmer is refocusing on hope by identifying light at the end of the trunnel” but it acknowledged the abstentions failed to “fully represent much wide and deeper concern within Labour ranks at the surprise cash grab”.
How the Express & Mail saw it
For once the ailing Tory loyalist Daily Express captured the public mood music with a front page dominated by a photo of a placard bearing lineup of Tory MPs and peers, Green Party, Reform UK and LibDem MPs and charity campaigners outside parliament before the vote and headlined “UNITED WE STAND IN WINTER FUEL FIGHT”. A cynic might note that the Express’s rapidly declining circulation reflects the age profile of much of its remaining readership, but to its credit, it was the first to launch a “Crusade to Save Winter Fuel Payments” with front page after front page in the build-up to Tuesday’s vote. Its Wednesday leader, headlined “Such callous treatment of the most vulnerable”, made great play of a line that came up from all sides of the Commons during Tuesday’s debate: Why was there no mention of the Winter Fuel policy in Labour’s general election manifesto and where is the Impact Assessment a government would normally carry out before making such a sharp cut?
Surprisingly, Nigel Farage didn’t feature on the Express front page where lately he’s been appearing almost as often as the masthead.
But the Reform leader did pop up in the Commons quashing rumours he’d prioritise supporting his pal Trump in the US.
Unsurprisingly, it was the main attack line by Rishi Sunak as short-term Leader of His Majesty’s drastically reduced Opposition at Wednesday’s PMQs. The second week running, Sunak had seized on the pensioners’ winter fuel issue, once again looking more comfortable grilling his successor than being grilled by him. From Keir Starmer, there wasn’t a direct answer, beyond asserting it was a bit of cheek coming from the man whose government left him with the “£22bn black hole” inheritance that has forced on him a decision he would rather not have made. The expressions on the faces of many Labour backbenchers (and perhaps a few front benchers too) suggested they didn’t agree it was the right decision.
Never to be outdone by the Express, the mightier Mail couldn’t resist going into total, classic Paul Dacre overdrive on its Wednesday front page. Above the headline, “WHO VOTED FOR ALL THIS?”, it pronounced in a red and black type mix, “After just 68 days. Starmergeddon. Prisoners soaked with celebratory bubbly as thieves, drug dealers and violent criminals are freed early. One declares he’s now a ‘life-long Labour voter. Another was greeted by friends in a Lamborghini. All on the day Starmer’s MPs voted to axe winter fuel cash for 10million pensioners.”
Inside, the Mail carried a 2-page spread headlined, “PM’s biggest revolt over ‘cruel’ OAP cuts”. Parliamentary sketch writer Quentin Letts featured under the colourful headline, “Labour MPs looked wretched, liquid in their guts. They were hating every minute of this” with his sketch starting, “Topsy-turvy times. A Labour party kneeing old age pensioners in the soft parts and Conservative tremulous-voiced, one almost weeping as they spoke up for oldies.” Topsy turvy times indeed. But as one Labour ‘rebel’ put it to me after I showed him the Mail coverage: “The Daily Mail and Rishi Sunak as the sudden champions of the poorest in society? Give me a bloody break, from cynical, hypocritical opportunists, purleese.”
How The Times saw it
Somewhat surprisingly, The Times didn’t feature the winter fuel rebellion on Page 1 and relegated it to Page 6. But it did feature a couple of fascinating columns. Political sketch writer Tom Peck mocked (slightly inaccurately): “Early arrivers at Westminster were treated to an actual protest on the lawn behind the House of Commons, complete with placards and everything. ‘Keep the Winter Fuel Payment’ they read. If you looked hard enough, you could just about make out that most of the 50 or so protesters were wearing their green Commons lanyards, because absolutely all of them were Tory MPs. As far as protests go, it was a masterclass. Some people have been known to protest outside parliament for more than a decade with irritating loudspeakers... this protest lasted precisely as long as it took for a social media intern from Tory HQ to take a photograph of it. The iPhone clicked and that was a wrap. Glory be. Why can’t they all do it like that?”
But there was some warmer comfort for Sir Keir from Times columnist and Tory peer Lord Daniel Finkelstein a few pages further back under the headline, “We can’t afford not to cut winter fuel benefit”. He went on: “I am not overjoyed about this policy. Who would be? But has Labour really made a political error, as so many people suggest. In the short run, it has. And pensioners will remain cross about it for longer than just the short run. But I still think the bigger mistake would be not to have done it”, he argued, effectively supporting the Starmer / Reeves ‘black hole’ defence. Sweet music to the ears of the PM and chancellor amid their media mauling.
As a personal test, I did a vox pop among Labour supporting OAP friends, neighbours and contacts. OK, many of them comfortably unaffected by fuel allowance cuts. Several who always donate their £300 quid to charity rather than investing in a crate of vino or an evening dining at the local branch of The Ivy.
One sprightly 73-year old former Labour local party chair, who donates his to charity and still plays a mean game of tennis, put it this way: “If this was a game of tennis, Keir and Rachel have made an unforced error and come Budget Day they are going to have to devise some way of bouncing back in the court of public opinion.”
He is, I suspect, going be proved right despite all the tough talking from the Number 10 team.
