The new government’s honeymoon period with the voters ended at 3.33pm on Monday 29 July. This was when the chancellor stood up to announce to MPs that all but the poorest pensioners would lose their winter fuel payments.
The politics of this announcement were pretty grim. It is one thing coming up with a package of cuts where everyone feels some of the pain but we are “all in this together”. It is quite another to make one group of voters feel singled out by the government. And the problem was made worse a few weeks later when Ofgem announced a 10% increase in energy bills for this winter.
