Green Ed is said by colleagues to be the cabinet minister most angry about the standalone axing of the winter fuel allowance for ten million pensioners. The word is Miliband was quietly working on a new lower tariff for elderly, vulnerable and low-income households. The £300 payment could have been presented as giving a cash subsidy to highly profitable energy companies, while pensioners wouldn’t lose because suppliers would charge them lower prices. That was a missed alternative route. Rachel Reeves shot the benefit horse before Miliband motorised the cart.
Keir Starmer’s warm-up woman at the TUC Congress, Angela Rayner, dodged all mention of winter fuel at a jolly dinner with the brothers and sisters who gave her a standing ovation on the eve of the PM’s speech. Angela Raver quipped she’d received a warm welcome in Brighton from everybody until Sharon Graham shouted: “It’s a sell-out!” Every other general secretary laughed, as did Graham herself, the government’s noisiest union critic.
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