Good morning. Later this afternoon, the House of Commons will very likely vote to make about nine million pensioners ineligible for the winter fuel allowance. But even if they win comfortably, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves may come away with a much clearer sense of exactly what the £1.3bn saving is likely to cost them.
Any Labour MP still holding out hope that the government might make concessions around the edge of the policy to soften the blow received little encouragement from the chancellor at a party meeting last night. “I understand the decision that this government has made on winter fuel is a difficult decision,” she said. “[But] there’s a £22bn black hole in the public finances because of the mess created by the previous government.”
