Leftwingers say winter fuel payment cuts need to be reversed to win back voters
And it is not just Labour leftwingers who are calling for a full U-turn over winter fuel payments and cuts to sickness and disability benefits. As Jessica Elgot reports, the former MP Mike Amesbury, who triggered the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby when he resigned after his assualt conviction, told the Today programme this morning that these decisions were mistakes. Amesbury said:
Reform have been the beneficiaries really of some big political mistakes from the Labour government, and I sincerely hope that Keir [Starmer], the Labour prime minister, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, not only listen, but learn.
Constituents in Durham or elsewhere up and down the country didn’t vote that way because of my mistake. I live that moment every day of my life … if I could turn back the clock and change things, I’d have done the right thing and walked away.
Very much hope this is true. The timing of this winter fuel policy, the way it was announced & the way it was designed has caused so much anger & political damage the length & breadth of the country. If the govt wanted to show it was listening, this would be a good start.
If Labour decision makers think “reviewing” Winter Fuel Allowance will save them, they’re not living in same world as rest of us. Only scrapping of WFA cut & dropping completely plans to cut benefits to disabled will show that as PM claimed, “he gets it.”
Standing up for communities put most at risk by 14 years of austerity — the elderly and disabled — should be the priority.
Reviewing the Winter Fuel Allowance cut will not deliver the change promised.
It must be reversed, along with dropping plans to cuts benefits.
The Labour government was wrong to cut winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners last September — and it’s still wrong now.
I voted against it then. It must be *fully* reversed now.
‘In response to local elections’….
(And not because it was morally wrong to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance in the first place).
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