Inside the town where Rachel Reeves is MP - abandoned shops and businesses on the brink
In Pudsey, the biggest town in Reeves's constituency, just under one in five people are aged 65 or over and here, like anywhere in the UK, the controversial scrapping of the winter fuel allowance is perhaps the one policy that Reeves is universally known for.
Susan Watson, 52, works in the local Age UK and has seen firsthand the impact that the removal of the £300 payment to help with energy bills is having.
She told the Express: "She's not too well liked anymore, put it that way.
It's quite a gamble, apart from the last one, and this explains a good deal of political behaviour.
11 comments:
"She's not too well liked anymore..."
Whereas we used to adore her for her sunny disposition, sparkling wit, stellar career, and of course the fact that she was a local girl from London...
Abolishing the Winter Fuel Allowance was the most astonishing small political blunder I can remember.
I say "small" to distinguish it from e.g. foreign adventures (Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya) and that Great Fascist/Bolshevik Coup that was the response to the Pandemic. Being "small" the public can readily appreciate it and change its political sympathies accordingly.
Was this Reeves 'Ratner' moment? The next election result should give us some idea (if we're still allowed to vote in 5 years time).
Penseivat
"She's not too well liked anymore..."
Given her assiduous emulation of Henry VII’s chancellor, Archbishop Morton (of ‘Morton’s Fork’ fame) its a virtual certainty that she will come to be regarded in the same way; according to a contemporary chronicler with an admirable turn of phrase, Morton ‘lyved not withoute the greate Disdayne and greate Haterede of the Commons of thys Lande’.
I was saying to Mrs DJ only this morning that abolishing the Winter Fuel Allowance could have been carried out so much more adroitly. As could the VAT on private schooling. Or the changes to inheritance tax for farmers. Give people 12 months warning, sprinkle a few ameliorating measures and the grumbles would have been much reduced.
From which I infer either the Labour Government are incompetent or they don't care about the casualties in their War on Class.
I thought Pudsey was a teddy bear.
Modern life is so confusing.
Sam - yes, how did voters fail to see past the red rosette to the stooge dropped on them by parachute?
dearieme - it was astonishing, I still don't see how Labour politicians nodded through something so obviously damaging yet economically unimportant.
Penseivat - I do hope it's the Reeves 'Ratner' moment, and the Starmer 'Ratner' moment.
Macheath - at this rate she'll struggle to be as popular as Archbishop Morton. I'm sure there was an illustration in '1066 and All That' - must look for it.
DJ - or the Winter Fuel Allowance withdrawal could just have applied to pensioners paying higher rate tax, it wasn't difficult. It looks like gross political incompetence to me, they just didn't see it.
Peter - so did I, it is confusing.
"or the Winter Fuel Allowance withdrawal could just have applied to pensioners paying higher rate tax,"
But that raises virtually no money at all. Yes it would have been politically easy to justify, but by the time the costs of implementing such a scheme had been taken into account there would be pretty much zero extra revenue to be gained. So why bother, other than as a petty vindictive measure? It was always an all or nothing decision, total abolition raises a decent sum when you have pay rises for well paid 'public servants' to be paid for, the question really remains which bright spark in the Treasury suggested it, and what on earth made Reeves not dismiss it as obvious political kryptonite?
Are they playing a very long game? Are they aware they are going to have to come back to the tax well repeatedly over the next 4 years and are going to attempt to hammer the 'well off' in more and more stringent ways, and thus the abolition of the WFA will be political cover for that? Look we're all in together, the pensioners had to lose their WFA, so now we can make the pips squeak for 'the rich'?
@Sobers
There are still parts of the economy and family life which fall outside the control of Government. I suspect that the current Labour government (The Zealots That Be) finds this distasteful and contrary to the Utopian ideal.
Hence the abolition of the WFA, VAT on private school fees, inheritance tax changes. And perhaps why the Net Zero lunacy is grabbed so fiercely. There will be more to come... such as wealth taxes (introduced just as casually). It won't end until nobody has anything (except for politicians, the criminals and the black economy).
Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of progress.
Sobers - "what on earth made Reeves not dismiss it as obvious political kryptonite?"
That's the puzzle, it seems to class her as a useless politician and a useless economist. I think Dominic Cummings is at least partly right about how the Cabinet operates. Everything is decided beforehand and the politicians follow a script and nod it through while enjoying themselves by strutting around pretending to be Cabinet Ministers. It accounts for what we see if we assume Reeves is amazingly dim.
DJ = I agree, as if the model is a toned down version of North Korea, but toned down by subterfuge and softer propaganda. As if there are no substantial cultural or political barriers to totalitarian drift.
@ Sobers, hope you don’t mind, but I’ve borrowed your excellent phrase and a chunk of the comment.
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