In the latest instalment of the political incompetence of Blue Labour, having withdrawn the Pensioner's Winter Fuel Allowance, they have now again hit the working-class, by refusing to compensate WASPI women, for having lost out as a result of changes made to their pension age. The average payment would have been around £30,000, being the amount by which they have previously lost out. Who is now likely to immediately seize that gift horse presented to him? Nigel Farage. Expect a statement from him in the next 24 to 48 hours, after he gets back from hobnobbing with his billionaire friend Elon Musk.
Of course, if they have any sense, the Liberals, Greens, and others will seize on this opportunity to press home the advantage, at a time when the disastrous policies being pursued by Blue Labour has reduced the party to the ranks of the also rans, according to the latest polls. The total cost of the compensation would be a one-off £10 billion, so, besides the fundamental issue of fairness involved in compensating these women, its not as if the cost of doing so would break the bank. At a time when the rest of Blue Labour's policies have sent the economy into recession, not to mention the £40 billion a year cost of their continued pursuit of the nightmare that is Brexit is inflicting on the economy, a £10 billion boost into the households of these pensioners, especially had they organised it to occur before Christmas, would not only have removed the bitter taste from their Winter Fuel fiasco, but would have seen much of that money fed straight back into the economy, in immediate spending, boosting aggregate demand.
Much of that spending (about 20% of it, in fact), would have gone back into government coffers in VAT receipts, and another large part would have gone back to the government in the form of corporation and income taxes. Rather like the failure to immediately spend some money by giving Councils up front funding to fix the potholes that are causing the country's road system to collapse, the supposed economic genius, Rachel Reeves, doesn't seem to be able to even score in an open goal, and pick the low hanging fruit in front of her eyes. Why?
James O'Brien asked a similar question in relation to Brexit, and basically acted as apologist for Starmer's government by saying he didn't know what else he could do, given that any concession given to the EU would cause the right-wing media to go into full furious rants about treason.
But, they will do that anyway, and so what if they do? O'Brien claims that Starmer does not have “front page o phobia”, so, in that case, why would he care if they rant even more? The real reason that Starmer can't say anything about the catastrophe of Brexit is that for the last 5 years, he has himself embraced it! Long before becoming Prime Minister, Starmer was selling the bullshit about the possibility of negotiating a beneficial “Labour Brexit”. Starmer has stolen all the clothes of the Tories, not just on Brexit, but in his own full English jingoism, flag-waving, xenophobia, immigrant bashing and so on.
Starmer gambled that core, progressive Labour voters would vote for him anyway, despite all of the reactionary, nationalist, Tory agenda, and so he only had his eyes on the mirage of winning over Brexit voters in the “Red Wall”, most of whom were never Labour voters to begin with, and few of whom would be won over by his late conversion. The General Election proved that as those reactionary Brexit voters, deserted the Tories, not for Blue Labour, but Reform, and in the meantime, Starmer's reactionary agenda drove away progressive Labour voters in their tens of thousands to the Liberals, Greens, Independents and others, a tidal wave that is set to grow even more dramatically in the coming months.
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