BREAKING: Just ONE Labour MP Stands Up to Starmer for Pensioners

Right, so it is no surprise that Labour have won the vote on the winter fuel allowance cut to pensioners today, they were always going to, the overwhelming size of their parliamentary majority and the fact Starmer filled his ranks with yes men guaranteed that, but any talk of a large rebellion as so many MPs moaned about this policy amounted to pretty much nothing.
What Starmer and Reeves have done here is once again take the very easy choice, the very easy route, by punching down on those less fortunate rather than tax wealth. Do something that will raise, compared to the size of their dubiously claimed financial black hole, virtually nothing in terms of money. Attack a demographic that is considered the Conservative Party voter base, attack a demographic that doesn’t tend to vote Labour, thinking they can get away with it, much as the Tories got away with attacks to benefit claimants, who can forget their penny pinching when they uprated Universal Credit during the pandemic, but refused to do likewise and went to court to stop them being forced to do likewise for those still on the old benefit system? In exactly the same vein as the Tories should be held to account for the vicious cuts and choices they made to avoid taxing the rich, Labour are making their own choices and the same falling standards and lethality of that is laid bare. There is no difference between either party, when instead of protecting the people, they sacrifice them at the alter of capitalism.
Right, so Labour have won their vote on cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance, it’s not like Keir Starmer was ever going to lose it really, not when yet again he abuses the use of the party whip, imposing another draconian three line whip on his own party to vote this measure through, condemning many of their oldest constituents to misery and for many, death as Labour’s own research suggests some 4,000 excess deaths will result from the measure, all of this was known way back in 2017, when such research was commissioned under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, during which time Keir Starmer was in his cabinet, so it’s not like he doesn’t know, but just like any true blue Tory, he simply doesn’t care.
Once upon a time, the party whip was a device to simply ensure that MP’s conducted themselves with honesty and integrity. Now it is used as a stick to beat MPs into submission and not represent their constituents. Country before Party Starmer said, except when he whips his MPs otherwise. Now it is used to make sure his MPs vote to keep kids in poverty and now, here to ensure that thousands of pensioners are left without the means to heat their homes.
Of all the currently sitting Labour MPs, not including those already suspended from the party over the child poverty benefit cut, just one – ONE of them, chose to vote against their own party. Just one actually rebelled, because abstention is not doing what is right and just, it is taking the cowards way out over something that should never have taken a second thought to reject, however this is what 53 Labour MPs chose to do. Due to their cowardice, Labour won the vote by a margin of 348 to 228. The one currently sitting Labour MP who did the right and decent thing was Jon Trickett. He issued a statement afterwards saying:
‘I have voted against the government’s proposal to remove the winter fuel payment.
The winter fuel payment was a great Labour achievement. When it was introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997, I was proud to vote for it.
That Labour government had a transformative impact on pensioner poverty, which fell from 28% to 13% during our time in office.
It shames our country that pensioner poverty has now risen to 18% after fourteen years of Conservative rule.
This winter will be extremely difficult for my constituents of all ages. After years of obscene profiteering by energy companies, they are hiking bills once again.
I fear that removing the payment from pensioners will mean that many more will fall into poverty this winter. We know that the consequences of pensioner poverty are devastating. It can even be a matter of life and death. I have worked behind the scenes to try and change the Government’s position, but to no avail.
Our country is richer than it’s ever been, but the wealth is not shared fairly. In my view the Government should be looking to raise revenues from the wealthiest in society, not working class pensioners.
I could not in good conscience vote to make my constituents poorer. I will sleep well tonight know that I voted to defend my constituents.’
Solidarity to Jon Trickett for showing the courage of his conviction and for being the only Labour MP, barring of course any who were paired for this vote, who put their constituents before their party. Of the 7 MPs who were suspended for backing the scrapping of the two child benefit cap, 5 of them also stood by their constituents; John McDonnell, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Zarah Sultana and Ian Byrne, thus looking increasingly more unlikely they will be readmitted to the Labour Party any time soon, if at all. I daresay Trickett might expect to be joining them soon if Starmer’s past track record counts for anything, at time of writing though, he’s still a Labour MP.
This vote has just stripped some 10 million pensioners of the Winter Fuel Allowance, the top up payment Labour itself introduced, Gordon Brown introduced, to ensure those in our society most vulnerable to the cold, had enough money to heat their homes. Now Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who really ought to be better known collectively now as Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves, for the sake of dropping a pittance into Reeves fiscal black hole, some £1.5bn raised to fill a £22bn alleged gap in public spending and I say alleged because the requirement to fill it is arguable and where cutting our way to growth as Starmer and Reeves keep bleating about is what the Tories had been trying and failing to do for years and yet here they go again with it. Sure Labour say the economy will collapse if it isn’t cut, but if that is all the saving is, £1.5bn, she’s either thick, stupid, or both. Our national expenditure is about £1tn a year, a thousand billion, so come off it, you’d have to be soft in the head to buy that line. So all the talk of economic calamity, of having no choice, of blaming the Tories for this, well none of it is actually true. It’s all a lie and it’s now been voted through regardless and every Labour MP who voted it through did so putting their own interests first, rather than doing what was right and just and fair and every last one of them who voted for this deserves to lose their seat for it. It should never be forgiven or forgotten and actually I’m not surprised so many of them did as instructed, as last night there was a private members meeting where MPs could air their grievances freely about this and according to one attendee, not a single member of the parliamentary Labour Party spoke up with concerns. Not one single Labour MP. Doesn’t that just go to show how successful Keir Starmer has been of gutting the party of anybody worth voting for?
4,000 more pensioners will statistically die this winter as a result of this move, on top of the 8,000 that already die each winter because they live in cold homes. Disproportionately this attack will hit over 75’s more, since of working pensioners, most are between pension age and 75, most will be people living in the north and because women live longer, more of them will be affected than men, therefore this is an ageist, misogynistic disproportionate attack on the north as well.
As a whole though, it is the single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation, it functionally puts such unpopular moves, like Theresa May’s Dementia Tax plan in the shade, because of the harm it will do and the sheer needlessness of it. Bear in mind this was not even in the Labour Party manifesto, there is not one single person in the country who should feel guilty for voting Labour, when nobody knew this was something Rachel Reeves was planning. There may yet be hope though as a result of this underhanded scheming though, which I’ll come onto in a moment.
But Rachel Reeves has her £22bn black hole, Still, the line Labour stick to is they didn’t know about it. The OBR said it was there, the IFS have said it is impossible to not have known about it, but for as long as Rachel Reeves insists that the public finances are like a household budget when she knows it damn well isn’t, someone will have to pay for it and Labour have decided they’ll pick on pensioners. Presumably, it’s because they vote Tory, or are widely thought of as a demographic that they do, but that isn’t the point at all, when as an elected representative you are meant to represent the interests of all, whether they voted for you or not. Labour have already gone after kids, they can’t vote at all of course, so it all very much smacks of, not who do we have to hit with cuts, but who do we choose to hit with cuts. It’s not a case of looking at who hasn’t paid up, or who is to blame for the black hole she claims we have, that requires cuts to fill, which is also nonsense, she could choose to spend to invest to help get it paid down, the debt is owed to the government itself after all, they do own the Bank of England after all, so they can make other choices.
Fundamentally, the one choice they’ve chosen not to make, is the same one the Tories chose not to make and that is to tax wealth. The excuse to not do this now to free up the government’s ability to spend is now basically inexcusable and would be a very popular move across the board, except naturally for the rich and their media mouthpieces and the Tories. Instead of that though, Keir Starmer has said he’s prepared to be unpopular to do what is necessary. If that were true and people believed it, you wouldn’t be unpopular for doing it, so this again is his choice and on the matter of that choice, why is it that these so-called tough decisions and unpopular decisions are always against those with the least? The truth is, these are the easy decisions. The tough decisions would be going after the rich, who are also too often also party donors. Until we stop electing politicians who are up for sale to the highest bidder, that is something that unfortunately won’t change. Where the Tories got away with their shirkers and skivers mantras to attack benefit claimants, there’s no populist narrative that will protect Starmer and Reeves from public outcry when they go after pensioners.
There will still be those defending this choice of Starmer and Reeves though, saying there are rich pensioners who don’t need it and that is true, there are, but if you means test the winter fuel allowance, you introduce massive administration costs to make sure only those you deem deserving of it, get it. How about you make the winter fuel allowance taxable instead? Those that don’t need it, would then get taxed on it and some would still be recouped without introducing massive spending costs wouldn’t it?
Pensioners are getting a big fat pension increase Starmer has said too, but that won’t take effect until next April, the hardship of winter is coming before that.
Pensioners should claim pension credit, except this is barbarically complicated and doesn’t encouraging people to claim a benefit just negate the savings you are saying need to be made by cutting the winter fuel allowance? On top of all of that, we’ve just seen Starmer break his promise on energy price increases too, he’s waving through a 10% energy price increase at the same time he does this all as winter is coming! He couldn’t be more abjectly, painfully, politically inept if he tried! It adds another factor to this – if they are coining it in at the rate of £1bn in profit a week, why are pensioners paying a price here and not them? Massive tax breaks to the point they pay next to sod all and the excuses always made are that OFGEM have said they are only making small profits when we know the bog money is made in energy generation and distribution which OFGEM has no remit over, they only have a remit over supply, a convenient excuse politicians hide behind to not go after the oil and gas giants.
This is a sickening display of how badly this Labour government are going to fail this country and the people in it as they will fail to get the growth they want by copying the Tories, they won’t go after the rich, they won’t go after the corporations paying low tax rates too, we’ve got 5 years of this and we’re already sick to the back teeth of Starmer after just 8 weeks. Expect these sycophantic Labour MPs to carry on voting as they are dictated to, and fail us, their constituents. We can but hope for some kind of mutiny against this ongoing nastiness, pressure put on our MPs is one way of doing that. Labour MPs have not liked what they’ve been reading in their inboxes, keep up the pressure on them, especially as they claim expenses for their own heating this year. Don’t ever forget what has happened here today though and look after your elderly neighbours this year if you can, they’re going to need you more than ever this year.
Keir Starmer’s administration is going to be one that promises nothing but misery and on that, he will succeed in delivering, but what he won’t deliver are economic results. Until more cash is in our pockets and not lining the wallets of people already so obscenely rich they couldn’t spend it all in a dozen lifetimes, the economy won’t grow. Check out this video recommendation for more on what Starmer sadly has in store for us as your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.