'Should pensioners trust Starmer? Labour's attitude towards older people is revealing' - James Woudhuysen
Labour leader Keir Starmer has pressed Rishi Sunak on how he would fund the potential scrapping of National Insurance
PA
Should pensioners trust Sir Keir Starmer?
Attacking Rishi Sunak on the Tories’ aspiration to abolish National Insurance at a cost of £46billion, Starmer, 61, asked the prime minister whether he would ‘finally’ rule out cutting the state pension almost in half to fill ‘the enormous black hole’ that abolition would cost.
‘Vote Tory, risk your pension’ was his rallying cry.
Starmer has promised to keep the triple lock on state pensions for at least five years after he is elected – meaning that they will either rise at the rate of inflation, in line with average earnings, or by an annual 2.5 per cent, depending on whichever is highest.
His promise is unsurprising, given that there are 12.5 million pensioners eligible to vote.
But wait a minute. Much more interesting than the conventional minutiae of tax and spending is the broader question of Labour’s attitude to old people. For that is revealing.
Recall that one of the major, Labourist critiques of Leavers around the Brexit referendum in 2016 was that they were mostly oldies nostalgic for Empire and the Second World War.
And notice, too, Sir Keir’s relentless desire to be down there with the kids: as soon as Rishi donned a pair of Samba trainers to impress, the Labour leader sported Gazelles.
Worst of all, Starmer has been uncharacteristically consistent in his unwavering support for assisted dying – aka euthanasia – since 2015.
Labour has long thought the Tories a lobby group for old people.
Despite his recent conversion to the view that men cannot turn into women, his party could still criminalise parents and therapists who don’t indulge children in the belief that they have been born in the wrong body.
Given that most older people are women, his record of anti-women prejudice on the trans issue hardly reassures.
It is the same with housing. Starmer has pledged to build new homes, including on the Green Belt.
But given financial constraints, the pressure will be on him to take measures, also, against homes with spare bedrooms - homes which are principally owned by older people.
Behind Labour quietly looking d at oldies is its fondness for binary oppositions.
Young people: right side of history, good on climate change, prefer cycling to cars, thoroughly modern on trans.
Old people: reactionary, prejudiced, anti-gay, often racist.
Young people: impoverished, will never own their own homes.
Old people: rich, so it’s time for baby boomers to share their spoils with the young.
The contempt for baby boomers goes far. It isn’t explicit, but Labour’s media fellow travellers show which way the wind is likely to blow. As Guardian journalist Catherine Bennett once put it, oldies ‘persist in speaking the language or displaying the attitudes of a darker, pre-hipster age’.
Pensioners, then, are not just an economic issue for UK plc.
They are caught in the culture wars just like every other social group.
We saw how they were treated during Covid, particularly in care homes.
LATEST OPINION:
Jeremy Hunt has suggested aims to cut National Insurance, which could cost £46billion
PA
Yet Labour was the most zealous in its insouciance about the treatment of old people during the pandemic, preferring to concentrate much of its efforts on the damaging wild goose chase of locking young people out of schools.
None of this is to say that the Tories are trustworthy on old people.
Both parties take older people for granted when they are not patronising them, despite all the youthfulness and progressive sentiments that today’s generation of pensioners displays.
As one gets older, one gets wiser (the adroit use of Google is a case in point).
But it would not be wise to trust Sir Keir Starmer on old people – or anything else.