Means, Test

The arguments that are being made against the Winter Fuel Payment are in fact arguments against the universal state pension. Why should Mick Jagger get that, either? I remember people around the Blair Government who wanted to means-test it. Here we are again.

The £400 increase in the pension will not come into effect until April, four thousand deaths later according to the Labour Party's own figures. Knife crime is a serious problem, but it is not going to kill four thousand people before the turn of the financial year.

This would be social murder no less than at Grenfell Tower, itself even worse than the arson of an hotel with intent to endanger life, since life was in fact lost. I am very glad that Thomas Birley has been dealt with speedily. The same should apply to those responsible for the Grenfell Tower fire, since we know who they were.

For his callous remarks about that fire, Tony Blair should be expelled from the Labour Party, removed from the Privy Council, stripped of his knighthood, and disbarred. For that fire itself, those named in Sir Martin Moore-Bick's report should be arrested and charged forthwith.

That there has been no such arrest or charge is an example of the real two-tier justice system. Another is that no one has been arrested and charged in relation to PPE. Everyone who had been in the VIP lane should now be arrested on grounds of reasonable suspicion. Once that had been lifted, then each of them would be released.

Not that corruption has ended with the change of government. Aspects of it are comical, such as the fact that, in order to appear a kindly grandfather, Keir Starmer has dyed his hair an almost white grey on the advice of Lord Alli, who pays for the Prime Minister's clothes and glasses in return for a Downing Street pass.

But there is a profoundly anti-democratic side to all of this, with Alan Milburn reprising his role as the great privatiser of the NHS, only this time with a pecuniary interest. Where are the minutes of the meetings to which Wes Streeting has taken him along? To which documents has Milburn had access? Does he, or does he not, have a pass for the Department of Health and Social Care?

Similarly, where are the minutes of the meeting at which Starmer and Rachel Reeves decided to means test the Winter Fuel Payment? Until we see those, then I say that their claim to have done so only after they had seen the books in office is a lie. Prove me wrong. Prove a lot of people wrong, in fact. Ian Lavery, Diane Abbott, Grahame Morris, Andy McDonald, Rosie Duffield and Chris Webb have all signed EDM 155 today. They, and the rest of them, should walk the walk through the correct Division Lobby tomorrow. Or never talk the talk again.

There are also the hardline pro-Israeli elements of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We may regard the recent restriction on arms to Israel as pitiful, but it is anathema to them. This is their chance to take a stand, and to do so in a way that would be well-received by their Constituency Labour Parties. We had all expected their éminence rouge to be made a Whip, and no doubt so had he. Well, a Whip is as a Whip does.

In the summer of 1992, official opinion was that the Conservative Party was going to be in power forever. Yet all of that came crashing down on 16 September. From then on, the Major Government was in its last days. Those dragged on for four and a half years. But everyone knew that they were its last days. In ascending order of likelihood, the Starmer Government is about to be defeated, or to be forced into a humiliating compromise, or to win a thoroughly pyrrhic victory that caused its never very great popularity to collapse. Tomorrow, this Government looks set to enter its last days. Stretched out over almost an entire Parliament. But still obviously its last days.

Unlike the vote on the two-child benefit cap, this will be legislative. If the House of Commons rejected this means test, then it would not become law. It has precisely one opportunity to do so. But so has the House of Lords. The Government has chosen to means-test the Winter Fuel Payment by Statutory Instrument, which means that while neither House of Parliament can amend it, either could just annul it. Assuming that it will have passed the Commons tomorrow, then on Wednesday, Ros Altmann will invite the Lords to throw it out. That House would be perfectly within its rights to do so, and it should.

Not before time, the trade unions are coming out fighting against the attempt, either opportunistic or innumerate, to blame them for this, so their many veterans on the red benches should vote for the fatal motion. Obviously, all of the Lords Spiritual should turn up to do so. The report of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is devastating, and every member of that Committee should vote accordingly, including the three Labour ones, one of whom was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party until 2019. And every hereditary peer should vote to ask Starmer how he intended to retaliate.