Are Labour about to u-turn on the winter fuel payment?

Could Labour be about to water down its removal of the winter fuel payment for pensioners? The chorus of muttering is getting louder in the party about restricting it to those on pension credit or other means-tested benefits, with backbenchers saying they have been shocked by the volume of letters from pensioners about it. This week, Rachael Maskell called on the government to think again about the policy after the new energy price cap went up, and now Harriet Harman has intervened with her own suggestion. Baroness Harman politely offered a compromise in which ‘they decide to make a different cut-off point’.

Harman doesn’t tend to criticise her party in public: she always tries to take a positive line about its leadership or stays quiet. So her intervention is significant and reflects the growing disquiet in Labour. But some of that disquiet in turn reflects quite how shocked Labour MPs are by the simple reality that governing is very hard and people rarely thank you for it.