With the U-Turn on winter fuel payments, now is the time to increase the pressure on Starmer’s government, argues Steph Pike 

Having spent the last few months defending the decision to cut winter fuel payments, Starmer announced a U-turn on winter fuel payments in parliament last week. This came after terrible election results in May with Reform capitalising on Starmer’s refusal to improve the lives of ordinary people and winning the Runcorn by-election and hundreds of council seats. Labour canvassers reported that the winter-fuel-payments cut was repeatedly raised as a huge concern for voters. Starmer was forced to act because of his government’s deepening unpopularity from its stance over Gaza and the continuation of austerity. It was all brought to a head by a growing number of increasingly unhappy Labour MPs, terrible election results and a growing united campaign against austerity and a mass Palestine movement.  

Within weeks of the Labour government being elected, it announced that winter fuel payments would be removed from ten million pensioners; a move that would push an estimated 100,000  elderly people into poverty. Coming after Starmer’s refusal to abolish the two-child benefit cap, it signalled the end to any hope that the new government would bring in any meaningful positive change for ordinary people. And things were only to get worse. Within months, the Starmer government moved to attack another group of the most vulnerable, announcing brutal cuts to disability benefits which will remove Personal Independence Payments from over a million disabled people and push hundreds of thousands deeper into poverty. 

At the same time, Starmer has refused to tax the rich and has committed billions to buy weapons and bombs while insisting that there is no money to improve the lives of ordinary people. The cut to the winter fuel payment, refusal to abolish the two-child benefit cap and the attack on disability benefits are deeply unpopular and has provoked protests and campaigns from unions, pensioners groups, disability groups and anti-austerity campaigns. 

Yet, what Starmer has actually announced is pitiful; all he has said is that winter fuel payments will be extended to a few more pensioners, and has refused to clarify what the new rules will be or confirm that changes will be in place by the coming winter. He is taking billions from ordinary people, offering us crumbs and expecting us to be grateful. Like Lammy’s empty words about Gaza, the winter fuel U-turn is the act of a desperate government trying to gain popularity with empty words and no action; they are trying to put a velvet glove on an iron fist. However, it is a sign that Starmer is under pressure and has had to shift his position. 

It is also a sign that protest does work. This means we have to ramp up the pressure. It is even more important that we build a massive united campaign against austerity to increase the pressure on Starmer’s government to fully restore winter fuel payments, abolish the two-child benefit cap, and abandon its plans to cut disability benefits, and to provide an alternative to Reform who are trying to use the hatred of Starmer to pull people into their politics of hate and division. We have to do everything we can to build the People’s Assembly National Demonstration against austerity on 7 June. We need hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of London to tell Starmer and his government: No More Austerity! Welfare not Warfare! Tax the Rich!