“I didn’t want to means-test the winter fuel payment,” said Sir Keir Starmer, referring to the small amounts of cash paid to eligible pensioners to help them get through the cold. “But it was a choice we had to make. A choice to protect the most vulnerable pensioners, while doing what is necessary to repair the public finances.” The policy is expected to take the payments – worth between £100 and £300 – from 10 million elderly people, just when bills rise by 10%, saving the Treasury £1.4bn this financial year. How such a meagre sum will pay - as the prime minister claimed - for a “functioning NHS”, which runs on a budget of £182bn, is unclear.
But Sir Keir’s speech was about politics, not economics. If the government continues in this vein it will be cutting department budgets and taxing people more. That is the definition of austerity. Sir Keir might be attempting, misguidedly in our view, to popularise this notion by taxing the rich – in his words those with “broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden” – while claiming to inflict spending cuts that miraculously don’t impact frontline services or only affect those close to Tory hearts.
