Yesterday (9), after months of deliberations, the British Labour government finally reversed its highly unpopular plan to cut winter home heating subsidies for millions of pensioners.
We have been reporting on this major misstep by Prime Minister Keir Starmer here in TGP since September 2024, as you can check in SHAME: Labour British PM Starmer and His Hellish Government Scrap Winter Fuel Payments for 10 Million Pensioners While Freeing 1,700 Prisoners, Including Dangerous Ones.
It was immediately apparent that this was bound to be a catastrophic decision, so much so that in December 2024 we reported on WATCH: Anti-Starmer Holiday Parody Song ‘Freezing This Christmas’ that Criticizes Fuel Cuts for Pensioners Reaches Top of the Charts in the UK – but BBC Still Won’t Play It.
Of course, Starmer’s premiership has been horrendous for many other factors, from the unchecked mass migration fraying the Kingdom’s social fabric, to the NET-Zero lunacy wrecking the economy – not to mention the non-stop war-mongering for Ukraine.
But when the Labour party got trounced by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the May 2024 local elections, leftist operatives identified the fuel payment cuts as a premiere beef that voters had with Starmer’s government, as we reported in Failing PM Starmer May Reinstate Winter Fuel Payments to Pensioners in Order To Calm the Rebellion of British Voters and MPs From His Own Labour Party.
So, yesterday, Starmer yielded to the ‘loud outcry from the public and some members of his Labour Party’.
After all, the $2 billion savings have cost them too much politically.
Associated Press reported:
“Treasury chief Rachel Reeves, who canceled the payment for home heating on all but the poorest retirees after Labour came to power last summer, said the benefit would be restored to 9 million people, or three-quarters of pensioners, in England and Wales whose incomes are below 35,000 pounds ($47,500). Reeves said the move was necessary last year because the previous Conservative government had left public finances in a dire state.
‘Targeting winter fuel payments was a tough decision, but the right decision because of the inheritance we had been left by the previous government’, Reeves said. ‘It is also right that we continue to means-test this payment so that it is targeted and fair, rather than restoring eligibility to everyone including the wealthiest’.”
Each recipient of the fuel payments receives between $271 and $406 a year.
“Canceling the payments for most people last winter was blamed for contributing to Starmer’s swift decline in popularity after his party came to power in a landslide. He was blamed for punishing elderly people on limited incomes who struggled to make ends meet during a cost-of-living crisis.
Labour fared poorly in local elections in England last month, with many party representatives blaming the removal of the winter fuel payment.”
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