Apart from his stirring demand for the return of the sausages from Gaza, one remarkable passage stood out from Sir Keir Starmer’s vacuous blustering to the Labour Party conference this week.
Stabilising the economy, he said, was ‘the only way to keep prices low, cut NHS waiting lists and secure the triple lock so that every pensioner in this country – every pensioner – will be better off with Labour’.
Every pensioner, Sir Keir? Not this one, that’s for sure. Nor millions of others like me, who have saved up throughout our working lives in the hope of a comfortable retirement, with perhaps something left over for our near and dear when the Grim Reaper harvests us.
In fact, I find it hard to think of a single pensioner, whether comfortably off or struggling to get by, who is likely to gain financially from this Labour Government. That’s unless, as some wags have suggested, we count Sir Keir’s £170,000-a-year Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, who is either 66 or 67, depending on which source is to be believed.
(Like so much else about Ms Gray, including her career-break running a pub in IRA bandit country, her age remains something of a mystery, which she has been in no hurry to clarify.)
The rest of us of a certain age appear to be the Prime Minister’s No 1 target for milking. More than any other age-group, we in our late 60s and older (I’m 70) are the ones he expects to pick up the bills for the billions he’s hurling at train drivers and public sector unions and his ruinously expensive plans to destroy the economy in pursuit of net zero.
For a start, there are the 9.4 million of us who will already be hundreds of pounds worse off each year, thanks to his decision to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment, which until now went to all pensioners, rich and poor alike.
True, those who claim Pension Credit will be spared the axe. These are the people who have put nothing aside for their old age, either because there was never enough coming in or because they spent all their income on other things while they were earning.
But even they are likely to be worse off under Labour than they would have been had the Conservatives remained in power.
As for the rest of us, Sir Keir may protest that the projected increase in the state pension, thanks to the triple lock, will more than offset the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment. But that just won’t wash.
For one thing, his plans to increase taxes on businesses, and Ed Miliband’s deranged dash for decarbonisation, can only translate into higher consumer prices for goods and energy.
For another, the Tories were also committed to retaining the triple lock – which was, after all, their own brainchild, dreamed up by David Cameron in 2011. What’s more, Rishi Sunak promised that the state pension would remain tax-free – a pledge I have yet to hear echoed by Sir Keir or the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
Under current projections, an estimated 300,000 who receive as little as £607.40 a year from other sources will be dragged into paying income tax on the new state pension when it rises next April.
Those who will be hardest hit by the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment are the estimated 780,000 on the lowest incomes who, for one reason or another, don’t claim Pension Credit.
Of these, many are simply baffled by the 243-question application form, while others so pride themselves on their self-reliance that they would rather suffer than live at the expense of others.
But while those at the bottom of the income scale will suffer the most hardship, as they always do, there are no prizes for guessing who will be handed the steepest bills for Ministers’ efforts to turn their Socialist dreams into reality.
If any of the speculation over the contents of next month’s Budget proves correct, the Chancellor will be training her sights principally at those who have accumulated assets over years of hard work.
That means people who own homes, shares, or pension pots and those who have made other provision for their retirement and for the loved ones they leave behind when they die.
Politicians are fond of calling these prudent folk ‘those with the broadest shoulders’. To a very large extent, however, what they mean is middle-class pensioners and those approaching retirement.
Only the other day, I complained in this space that when Sir Keir promised not to raise taxes for ‘working people’, he wasn’t thinking of me, or a great many others like me. That’s in spite of the fact that I still work to earn money for my family and the taxman (although admittedly only part-time since I turned 65).
Now it’s equally clear that he wasn’t thinking of people like me, either, when he suggested that every pensioner in the country would be better off under his party. I’d like to know this: if I’m neither a working person, to be protected from tax rises, nor a pensioner, who will be better off under Labour, then what exactly am I?
More mysterious still, if this Government is not planning to increase taxes for either working people or pensioners, then who does he expect to bear all the pain for the ‘difficult decisions’ he keeps warning us about?
One thing’s for sure. The few contents of the Budget foreshadowed so far – such as the 20 per cent VAT charge on school fees and the clampdown on non-doms – won’t raise anything like enough to finance his ambitions.
Indeed, some predict they will end up actually costing the Treasury money, as parents move their children from the private sector to hard-pressed state schools, and non-doms flee the country in their droves.
All I will say with any certainty is that just about every measure this administration has already promised or announced could almost have been calculated to make this country’s problems worse.
The plan to extend unions’ right to strike can only damage the economy. Mr Miliband’s refusal to issue new oil exploration licences for the North Sea is guaranteed to jeopardise our fragile energy security.
The housing shortage, too, is sure to get even worse with the ban on letting uninsulated homes, not to mention the planned charter of tenants’ rights, which has already driven many landlords to take their homes off the rental market.
Meanwhile, the Government’s abandonment of the Rwanda scheme, with nothing to replace it, can only embolden growing numbers of illegal migrants to make the perilous journey across the Channel.
As for the Budget, we’ll know soon enough just how much pain Ms Reeves plans to inflict on us. But I think we all know the answer to the question of who will have to shoulder the biggest share of the burden.
Every pensioner in the country will be better off with Labour?
If we didn’t know Sir Keir to be the most honest, incorruptible politician who ever drew breath – the sort of chap, for example, who would never accept lavish gifts from millionaires who might expect something in return – I would suspect him of telling a whopper.
