If you’re going to make a U-turn, do it properly, writes Andrew Marr
9 June 2025, 17:55 | Updated: 9 June 2025, 18:01
If you’re going to make a U-turn, do it properly.
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If you’re going to own up to a mistake, own it.
If you’re going to eat humble pie, then pour on a good dollop of grovel sauce while you are at it.
When Keir Starmer announced last month after Labour had taken a battering in the local elections he was thinking again about the removal of the winter fuel payment to millions of pensioners, everyone was a little suspicious.
How many would actually get the money back?
And when – in time for this winter?
Well today, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves filled in key details; and this is indeed a proper U-turn.
More than 3/4 of pensioners, that’s everyone with an income of below £35,000 a year, more than eight million people, will now get the payment this winter.
That will cost the treasury well over £1 billion and we don’t know where the money is coming from.
Reform and the Tories are claiming this is a victory for them, and you can see why but the real victors are the voters who told Labour what they thought in no uncertain terms.
It’s a victory for democracy – but it should, also, draw a line under the single biggest policy mistake made by Labour since the election.
It allows Reeves to focus for the rest of this week on the big investment coming in the spending review – more for nuclear power, creating thousands of new jobs.
More for tech, railways, policing and the NHS.
It’s one of the most important weeks for the new, but unpopular, government.
Up to now Starmer and friends have been widely criticised for being stingy, unimaginative and lacking in vision.
So the biggest question is whether this longer term investment and industrial strategy version of Labour hangs together – is noticed by voters - and can fend off the rising Reform rebellion led by Nigel Farage.
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