Pension Credit?

Well, of course the Parliamentary Labour Party whooped and hollered in a state of delirium as Rachel Reeves assured it that she would indeed be pursuing a measure that her own party had said would kill four thousand pensioners, increasing their usual winter death toll by 50 per cent. On 2 December 2015, not in private but on the floor of the House of Commons, Labour MPs had cheered and applauded wildly for a war. Anyone who has ever dealt with the Labour Right knows that there is no more ghoulish political faction in these Islands.

Now, the man who remains the Leader of the Conservative Party was Chancellor of the Exchequer when people with Covid-19 were sent back to their care homes in the hope that they would infect the other residents and ease the cost of social care. But even under him, even that party is going to vote against subjecting the Winter Fuel Payment to a means test that the Conservatives never imposed during their 14 years in office. Reform UK will also vote that way, as will all four stripes of Northern Irish Unionist in the House of Commons.

But the means test will still pass, on the votes of no one except the huge majority of Labour MPs, since those will be far more than enough. If there really were a full take-up of Pension Credit, then that would all but cancel out any saving from this. In itself, this will make a negligible contribution to filling any £22 billion "black hole". But none of that is what any of this is about. The hysterical Guardian fantasy of "500 progressive MPs" in "the most left-wing Parliament ever" ought never to have survived the vote on the two-child benefit cap. But this one will be legislative. If the Government lost it, then the means test would not happen. But the Government is going to win, and win on Labour votes alone, placing the last hope in the hands of a House of Lords with only 185 Labour members out of 805. Tribalists need to grow up.