U-turn on Winter Fuel Payment cut is a new low for Anas Sarwar

THE panic in the Labour Party in Scotland is palpable. 

Just a few weeks after Scotland's Labour MSPs voted to oppose a motion calling on the Labour Government to axe the Winter Fuel Payment for all but the poorest pensioners, Anas Sarwar has performed a screeching U-turn and announced that a future Labour-led Scottish Government would bring back the payment. 

This decision has, of course, nothing at all to do with reports that fuel bills are set to rise again, a spell of cold weather, and three upcoming council by-elections which are being contested amidst rising public anger at the decision of Chancellor Rachel Reeves to abolish the universal entitlement of pensioners to the Winter Fuel Payment and to restrict eligibility to pensioners on pension credit. 

This change removes the payment from hundreds of thousands of pensioners who don't claim pension credit despite being eligible, often out of fear of entanglement in a means-tested benefit system with a well-deserved reputation for cruelty and intrusiveness. Many thousands of others miss out on eligibility because their incomes are a few pounds too high, taking them over the threshold. 

The axe was met with anger and incredulity, the sum saved could very easily have been made up in other parts of the Government's budget, or by raising taxes on the better off, something Starmer refuses to do, doubtless because it would damage the stream of corporate donations his party has been raking in since Labour shifted sharply to the right under his leadership. 

Just today Age Scotland, a leading charity campaigning for older people, warned that it has "serious concerns" about people's health as the colder weather starts to bite and the effects of the cut begin to be felt. As south west England remains mild, temperatures in large parts of Scotland plummeted below zero. 

Age Scotland Chief executive Katherine Crawford said: "85% of pensioners in Scotland living in poverty or on the poverty line will have at least £200 less in their pockets as they face increasing energy bills over the coldest months. 

“We are seriously concerned about their health being jeopardised due to reluctance or inability to heat their homes to a comfortable level for fear of falling into debt. 

“We know that living in cold or damp conditions as we get older can increase the risk of flu and respiratory illness, as well as increasing instances of heart attack and stroke.” 

Faced with such criticism from respected organisations and widespread public disgust from voters who feel that they've been had, on Tuesday the Labour Party in Scotland announced that "a Scottish Labour Government will reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment." 

The announcement comes a couple of days ahead of three council by-elections in Glasgow. On Thursday, Labour will be defending three council seats after their newly elected MPs resigned from the local authority and went to Westminster to vote to axe the payment. 

Even for Sarwar this is risible: His party took money from pensioners and let them freeze, yet now he promises to give some of it back if they vote Labour. 

For sheer brass neck and shameful behaviour, this is a new low. 

But as with all promises from the Labour Party, and particularly the Labour Party in Scotland, all is not what it first appears. Despite what he claims, Sarwar is not planning to reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment if Scots are foolish enough to vote in a Labour government at the next Holyrood election. Instead, he is promising to introduce a Winter Fuel Payment. 

The misleading promise is deliberate. Sarwar is categorically not promising to reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment as it was before the Scottish Government was forced to copy the UK Government due to the sudden and catastrophic loss of £160 million in Barnett Consequentials as a result of Reeves's decision. 

What is being promised is a means-tested payment the amount of which depends on the income of the pensioner. This will entail significant administration costs and many pensioners may choose not to apply for the same reasons that many pensioners who are eligible for pension credit don't apply for that benefit. 

But Sarwar gets his headlines in the friendly Scottish media and with that he hopes to stem the haemorrhage of support his party is seeing in Scotland. Scottish pensioners will still be left in the cold. 

SNP Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart was distinctly unimpressed by the U-turn, saying: "Is that the same Winter Fuel Payment Scottish Labour MSPs voted against reversing last month? The same one that Scottish Labour MPs voted in favour of cutting?" 

SNP MSP George Adams added: "Honestly, what an absolute chancer, how about talking to your Scottish MPs that voted for it in the first place." 

Old video footage of Starmer emerges... 

Keir Starmer has been left embarrassed, or rather he would have been left embarrassed if he was capable of feeling it, after old video footage emerged of him denouncing Serbian attacks on the Croatian city of Vukovar as genocide during the wars which broke out as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s. 

In 2014, Starmer was part of a group of international lawyers who attempted to argue at the International Court of Justice that the Serbian siege of Vukovar in 1991 constituted a genocide. 

Starmer denounced the Serbs as committing genocide against the city's Croatian population. The Serbian army did on a smaller scale what what Israel is doing right now in Gaza but Starmer refuses to acknowledge that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide.  

In response to a question from MP Ayoub Khan in the Commons about atrocities being committed in Gaza, Starmer patronisingly replied: "I'm well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I've never described this as and referred to it as genocide." 

Last week, Middle East expert Richard McNeil-Willson told The National Starmer and Lammy are engaging in an “incredibly dangerous” approach in not only denying genocide but attempting to “redefine the nature of what genocide is”.