Lock and Load

Scrapping the triple lock on the state pension would raise nothing approaching enough money to introduce a National Care Service, or even the free personal care for the elderly that, since it already existed in Scotland, ought to exist throughout the United Kingdom to stem the tide of Daniel Thomas-style English nationalism. That is what is most likely to happen, so note well that the triple lock in Scotland does not render free personal care "unaffordable" any more than vice versa.

In any case, the relentless campaign against the triple lock, the logic of which would be the abolition of the state pension itself, has already decided that the money should instead be spent on "defence", making it obvious where that campaign's very high level of organisation was coming from. And John Healey, who contributed to the fall of Keir Starmer by resigning because there was not enough "defence" spending, knows that it is a lie that "the money is simply not there" for anything else. Now Chancellor of the Exchequer, Healey has in his time been both Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Financial Secretary to the Treasury. To pay for a war, then he would remember how the money supply worked. Well, that is just how the money supply works.

Going for the Angry Young Women to Restore Britain's Angry Young Men, the Green Party supports only a double lock, scrapping the 2.5 per cent rule. Restore wants to link the pension only to the Consumer Prices Index, and for all Reform UK's Boomer base, it has to pander to Restore because it holds its seats by tiny majorities while seeking to overturn many, many more. Holborn and St Pancras can defend even so little as one of the lowest pensions in Western Europe, payable from one of the highest ages, only by electing George Galloway.