Starmer has just done to Waspi women what he’s done to the rest of us | Personal Finance | Finance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves stuck the knife in just weeks after the election, instantly stripping 10 million pensioners of their winter fuel payment.
Yet in 2017, Labour had produced research showing that scrapping the payment would kill 4,000 pensioners every winter.
How can Reeves live with herself knowing that?
She then twisted the blade by axing the proposed £86,000 cap on social care costs. Tens of thousands of older people will now be forced to sell their homes to cover care fees.
Neither of these measures appeared in the Labour manifesto.
In her Budget, Reeves she geared up to inheritance tax on unused pension pots from 2027, with a potential income tax bill on top.
Yesterday, Labour dished out another pensioner punishment beating, telling so-called Waspi women they won’t receive a penny in compensation.
This really is beginning to look like a pattern.
Is Labour taking revenge on older people, the age group least likely to vote for the party? Is their punishment for overwhelmingly backing Brexit?
Sometimes it feels like it.
At least Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was open and honest about the decision. She said most women didn’t deserve compensation because they “knew the state pension age was increasing”.
As a result the government didn’t believe paying them £10.5billion “would be fair or proportionate to taxpayers”, Kendall added.
If only her boss Keir Starmer had been so open and honest with Waspis. Instead, he pretended he was on their side, right up to the point until he wasn’t.
In March 2022, I broke the news that Waspi campaigners had won a pledge of support from Starmer, then leader of the opposition.
He was pictured at the Scottish Labour Party Conference in Glasgow holding up a pledge saying: “I support fair and fast compensation for 1950s women.”
Now that he no longer needs their support, he no longer supports them. There will be no Waspi compensation on his watch, whether fair, fast or otherwise.
Something else Labour didn’t put in the manifesto.
In my view, Starmer never supported Waspi women. He just said whatever was convenient at the time.
We’ve seen that pattern time and again since he took power.
Starmer misled Waspi women, just like he’s misled pensioners, farmers, business owners, taxpayers and working people.
All politicians play fast and loose with the truth, but I can’t remember any having such a naked disregard for it as Starmer.
Or such disregard for the very poorest pensioners.
When Starmer retires, he’ll enjoy £1million-plus pension, funded by taxpayers. He’ll never know what it’s like to retire on the bread line, and today we learned he doesn’t even care. It’s only pensioners, after all. And they certainly won’t be voting for him at the next election.
