Labour’s age of miracles

I am not yet eligible for the winter fuel allowance. Nor am I especially in favour of it, regarding it as one of those times when the government bribes the public with the public’s own money and expects gratitude for doing so. Like anyone who pays taxes, I rather resent a government of any stripe using my earnings to make themselves look good. I’d go so far as to say it irks me.

Still, I have watched Labour’s abolition of the scheme with something like awe. I know pensioners who appreciate the couple of hundred quid that the government lobs their way each winter. But last month the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, simply scrapped the universal winter fuel payment. Some ten million pensioners will no longer be receiving the cash.

Yet it isn’t the decision itself which interests me so much as the response – or non-response – to it.