Prime Minister wants U-turn on winter fuel payments. Keir Starmer said he wants more pensioners across the UK to be eligible for the benefit – after cutting it.

by bottish

25 comments

  1. If you were trying to annoy the maximum amount of people over this – this is how you do it.

    Pensioners are left dangling as there is no detail if they will/ will not get it.

    It will also piss off people who supported the cut – as “more money to millionaire pensioners”

    The only people who will be happy will be the Press – who will get to keep speculating and asking questions ion this all the way to the Autumn Statement.

  3. Fuck them. The only reason this is happening is because pensioners vote

  5. I think hes just expanding the range but still this government.. I think they’re better than Tories but holy crap their advisors suck.

  6. Good news and hopefully the first of many victories for people opposing another round of needless austerity.

  7. Just an upgrade to the quadruple lock to go, and he’ll fully lose working-age voters to Lib Dems and Greens.

  8. There milquetoast and then there’s whatever the flying fuck this is.

    Maybe he wouldn’t need to flip flop like a drowning fish if he actually listened and didn’t surround himself by LFI-funded yes men.

    What an utter spoon.

  10. A higher threshold sounds like a good thing, it should soften the impact of Reeves’s cuts on poorer pensioners^1, but it opens up a new can of worms. What are the thresholds? How will this be administered?

    Reeves cut WFA and linked it to pension credits: receive one, receive the other. This added to the benefits cliff edge facing pensioners, but made it easy to administer. A new threshold means finding a new thing to tack WFA to (unclear), or creating a new means test just for this paltry payment. A new means test means new forms, new staff, new systems…

    Which is funny, because that would compound the issues with the cuts as rolled out. The savings from Reeves’s cuts to WFA partly depended on a lack of behaviour change. Making the savings involved hoping that people who were eligible before and were eligible still wouldn’t start claim it. Instead, the publicity around the cuts saw an increase an applications, an unexpected increase of payments *and* pensioners who were previously managing moved below the poverty line.

    ^1 [£5bn cuts are still coming for people with disabilities](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/20/liz-kendall-dwp-double-down-labour-disability-benefit-cuts)

  11. They have no policies and no principles. The only thread that links every Labour policy is what they think can get them a few votes.

  12. All of the Reddit starmerbots are going to have to be loaded up with new messaging in that case.

    Sir Forensic 4D Chess was widely pushed as some sort of political genius, after all.

  13. This is Centrist governance at its best. Absolutely no confidence in their own policies, if they even come up with any and binning them the instant they receive any criticism. The so called party of change that cannot bear to upset the apple cart.

  14. If they’re upping the threshold they should start making the payments in the form of the energy supplier gift voucher so nobody can spend it on Xmas gifts etc.

  15. Fuck em, remember when we shut down the country over a virus that while fatal to them was like a bad hangover for the most of us? Remember the kid’s development being stunted, education disrupted not to mention all the financial damage to businesses as well as workers? Well that piper needs paid and it’s time to cough up.

  16. Not a pensioner. The way this was done was not right. To be eligible you need to be receiving pension credit. To receive pension credit you need to be eligible and claim housing benefit. If you bought your own home and rely on a state pension alone you are excluded. If your private pension pays your rent then you are excluded. You can talk about boomer rhetoric all you want but the majority of pensioners have a modest pension and don’t live in million pound houses especially up north.

    This should have been properly means tested from the start. I do agree though that the taking away and giving back is purely a vote grab. It has “We listened to you” vibes. Make it fair and make it means tested then everyone is happy. Better yet renationalise the energy industry then we don’t have to pay money to cover their profits.

  17. Good thing they didn’t burn through all their goodwill two months after getting elected for nothing!

  18. I wonder what happened to the Machiavelli’s of the world… if we’re going to get malicious government could it at least be competent?

    Compounding forced errors is not a play.

  21. Just in time for the summer. Then u-turn again come winter!! Yay. Jesus, Labour and their wind blowing politics.

  23. Just checking in on the Labour lot in here:

    If it was sensible to cut WFA, and he’s now not doing it, does that mean Kier Starmer is now doing student politics? Or does not freezing pensioners become sensible politics once Sir Briefcase advocates for it?

  25. Pensioners Pensioners Pensioners Pensioners Pensioners Pensioners Pensioners always about the pensioners

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