Starmer signals winter fuel rethink before key welfare vote

‘Cut through’ is perhaps one of the most overused terms in Westminster circles – referring to those certain issues and policies that cut through the noise of the media landscape and stick in the minds of voters. Those policies that cut through can go both ways – either landing a positive perception of the government and the agenda that they are delivering – or proving unpopular with the electorate and motivating people to vote with their feet and deliver a clear message to those in power.  

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance falls firmly into the latter of these. Numerous on-the-ground dissections of May’s local election results point squarely to the unpopularity of the policy with voters and the role that the decision played in Labour’s poor results.  

In this context, and with the government keen to signal that it is listening, this week’s U turn on the policy comes as little surprise. Ahead of yesterday’s announcement, some in the party warned that this could be this government’s ‘Poll Tax’ moment - the defining policy of this government’s tenure.  

Journalist Anushka Asthana sheds more light into the decision and why Reeves decided on this course of action. At the heart of it, so the account goes, was a willingness from the Chancellor to signal to the markets that she was willing to take tough, potentially unpopular decisions to demonstrate her fiscal credibility. Faced with a menu of options from Treasury officials, including withdrawing funding from major infrastructure projects, ending free school meals, and ditching plans for a social care cap, means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance was therefore presented as the most palatable of these.  

Governments live and die by decisions such as this, and perhaps a combination of political oversight (the decision was taken shortly after a long election campaign and very shortly into Reeves’ time in Number 11) and hubris at the size of the party’s majority, led to this miscalculation. In any case, governments only have so much political capital and goodwill to burn, and this has no doubt expended a significant amount with the public and the party.   

With an increasing number of disgruntled voices on the party’s backbenches, both in response to the Winter Fuel Allowance cut and the upcoming welfare reforms, the government will be hoping that this provides enough of an olive branch to would-be rebels ahead of the key votes on welfare later in the summer.  

With an expected reshuffle to accompany June’s Spending Review, government will also be hoping that the carrot of junior ministerial posts can also quash any potential rebellions for those young, ambitious MPs looking to make a name for themselves.  

Where next for the government, then? Polling from More in Common suggests that the government is unlikely to pay a significant price from voters, with the electorate being supportive of a U-turn and thinking better of the government for having done so. It is also perhaps true that voters would rather government get things right the first time, without the wider media circus that has ensued since the decision was first taken.  

As ever, the devil will be in the detail and the full scale of the U-turn will only be announced later in the year in the Autumn Budget. The government will no doubt learn lessons from this, and with the crucial vote on welfare reforms to come, expect the fallout from the affair to continue in the coming months.