good morning. Rachel Reeves has announced details of her winter fuel U-turn. As I set out on today’s memo, it’s a huge moment not only for the government but also for the country.
Fear the old ones, they inherit your head (room)
Rachel Reeves has clarified the exact extent of her retreat over winter fuel allowances. Instead of limiting eligibility to the poorest pensioners, she passes it on to everything but the wealthiest.
All pensioners except 2MN pensioners (people who earn more than £35,000 a year) receive benefits. The remaining groups will continue to receive fuel payments, but the money will be taken away from their nails through the tax system.
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The Prime Minister leaves a hole of £1.25 billion in finances. More importantly, it further questions whether any of the tough spending settlements announced in tomorrow’s spending review can be held.
This is the difficult truth for the government. This is a tool test that was primarily applied to voters who did not support Labour in the last election, and is not part of the route to reelection. If workers fail to make this change to winter fuel allowance in the next four years, does the party really have what they need to deliver one of the cuts that falls into their voters? The answer is clearly “no.”
However, British politics has a great deal of significance. There is a land majority of workers, and its election coalition is almost entirely drawn from the working-age population. One important long-term challenge to the country’s finances is our aging population, and with this, our addiction to care becomes worse. Who can do it if Labour cannot overcome this kind of change and push it beyond the state pension age to spend on people? Is it Nigel Farage and does that path to Downing Street depend primarily on older voters? Of course it’s not.
As far as she is concerned, neither is Kemi Badenok, a self-descriptive little state conservative who reflects the 2010 Labour Party’s story about how the 2010 fuel allowance cuts were forced to make a choice between “heating and eating.” Can the Liberal Democrats opposed change from the start?
Like many old democracies, the UK is tackling a great problem. As we live longer, we will spend more and fewer taxpayers will support it. Part of breaking the UK’s “loop of destiny” just for public services is to increase solely for public services to stand still. But part of this should be a willingness to seriously consider reducing the benefits that are at least of which are too useful. The fact that the political parties that could govern Britain do not feel that they can do so either alone or in coalition means they are not extremely worried.
Try this now
This week I was mainly Dalia Stasevska, a mixtape from Dalia, recording modern classical music for BBC Symphony Orchestra and writing my columns.
Today’s top stories
Cold Wind | UK unemployment rates rose to four-year highs, leading to a sharp rise in pay taxes in April and a sharp rise in minimum wages that cooled wage growth.
The state’s return to massive nuclear investments | The UK has ended years of uncertainty about the future of the nuclear industry by pledging £11.5 billion of new state funds for Suffolk’s Sizewell C project, raising the site’s total taxpayer investment to £17.8 billion.
Missing Links | Nvidia’s Jensen Huang warns that the UK lacks the digital infrastructure needed to exploit the possibilities in artificial intelligence. The comments came after Kiel Starmer announced that he described it as “a significant increase in the size and power of the UK AI engine.”
Calm down | Secretary of the Interior Yvette Cooper has been told by the Treasury to find savings from other parts of the budget to protect spending on police.
Character “Arrass” | More than 300 Foreign Ministry staff members who have expressed concern about a potential British “co-complaint” called Israel’s “ignoring international law” were reportedly reported that the BBC was reporting if they were deeply opposed to government policies that could consider resigning. In response to the staff letter, I listed a set of ways officials could raise issues before adding that resignation was a “ultimate request” and “honorable course” for those with deep disagreements.
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