IT was the anger that exploded among Labour MPs the morning after May’s local elections that eventually led Keir Starmer to promise a U-turn (of sorts) on the biggest mistake of his premiership to date: the decision to strip winter fuel benefits from millions of pensioners.
At 8am on May 2, as it was clear that had in ’s first major electoral test as PM, a message pinged on my phone.
“Well, this is a f-ing mess,”;; wrote one fuming MP.
“Winter Fuel was idiocy.”;;
Then another: “ was a huge mistake . . . We should admit it, and put it right.”;;
And a third warning the policy “is going to define this Government”;;.
Not that this was news to the Prime Minister, or those close to him.
Starmer had long known that the decision his Government had taken just weeks after Labour’s landslide victory, to means-test , had caused massive anger.
When I spoke to dozens of insiders for my paperback, Taken As Red, some of his closest allies made clear to me how the PM felt about the Winter Fuel Payment decision, saying, in hindsight, Starmer felt he had been walked into a political disaster.
So why was the decision made in the first place, and how on earth did it take so long to reverse?
It all began in the house next door, No 11 Downing Street.
On Friday July 5, 2024, and her new team had barely slept as they trooped into their new Treasury offices.
At one point, they found themselves laughing, gathered around a urinal in Reeves’ own ensuite facility; a symbol of just how long this revered post had been held by men.
Then — in a briefing punctuated by a distant marching band rehearsal for the State Opening of Parliament — Reeves was handed what aides described as a nasty surprise.
First, a warning that financial pressures were worse than she thought, and a demand that she shows the markets a willingness to take tough spending decisions.
But what could the new Chancellor possibly cut?
Among the options laid down in front of her were taking money from sports and music in schools, stopping infrastructure projects; ending universal free school meals to the age of seven; ditching the plan for a social care cap; and means-testing Winter Fuel Payments.
The response — especially to changing free school meals — was described to me as: “Absolutely no way, are you mad?”;;
The attraction of the option was it delivered savings in that financial year — however the problem was never the principle but the execution.
The threshold would result in hundreds of thousands of poorer pensioners being caught out.
It is my understanding that Reeves rang the welfare secretary, , the weekend before the announcement to tell her it was coming.
By Sunday evening, Kendall was making her unhappiness clear, sending papers to Downing Street.
One argument was that the move could be seen as “discriminatory”;; against disabled older people.
The Treasury considered an alternative means-test but concluded it would be too expensive to create one.
Sources say the Prime Minister trusted his Chancellor completely.
I’m told he was just shown a “scorecard”;; listing the measures that Reeves would announce with a number beside them — but without receiving political advice. And he must not have delved further.
If Cabinet members realised just how bad this decision would be, few raised it on the day itself.
On the morning of Monday July 29, 2024, ministers filed into Downing Street where they were handed a piece of paper outlining a series of measures to read at their seats.
But soon a painful narrative was forming, of Labour hurting pensioners to meet the demands of its union paymasters.
Perhaps most difficult were the cuts to pensioners alongside a generous pay offer to train drivers.
The then-Transport Secretary, , would later show Starmer a diary outlining constant engagement with Number 10 officials over the deal, but somehow no one had told him.
on the radio and was “livid”;; — according to sources.
One told me he stormed into the 8.30am meeting, asking furiously: “What the hell is going on here?”;;
Ever-worsening nightmare
By then a painful narrative had set in — and by August it felt like the storm had become a hurricane inside Downing Street.
In September key aides gathered in Downing Street to discuss if they should back down and U-turn, but the view was that this was an impossibility.
Matt Pound, a key political adviser from the Treasury, argued it would be politically weak and show a government willing to flex at any sign of pushback, making future spending decisions tougher.
Behind closed doors Reeves took the argument to MPs. “She was fantastic, like a boxer in the ring,”;; said one source.
For some in Whitehall, it felt as if the decision was an ever-worsening nightmare but Pound’s attitude was described as the need to “fight, fight, fight”;;.
It was the local elections hammering that perhaps took the fight out of them — and paved the way for a partial U-turn,.
But as the Age UK charity has made clear: the devil will be in the final detail.
If the Government spends so much changing the threshold that the savings vanish, then what will have been the point of its most painful political fight so far?
- Anushka Asthana is the author of Taken As Red: The Truth About Starmer’s Labour.
