How winter fuel cost Labour these elections

Cutting the benefit was seen as an attack on the vulnerable. The decision has hobbled this government for nine months.

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The decision to cut the Winter Fuel Payment is haunting the government. In this year’s local elections – the first electoral test since Keir Starmer’s landslide victory last year – the removal of this annual £200 payment from the majority of pensioners was a defining issue. Speaking to journalists after her narrow re-election as Mayor of Doncaster, beating the Reform candidate by less than 700 votes, Labour’s Ros Jones urged her party in Westminster to “listen to the people” and pointed to anger over the Winter Fuel Payment as having pushed her victory to a knife edge. Her conclusions were as accurate as they are foreseeable. Cutting the Winter Fuel Payment has become this government’s original sin.

In Runcorn and Helsby, the by-election to replace the Labour MP Mike Amesbury, a similar tale unfolded. As well as upset over the Winter Fuel Payment, Labour canvassers were met with outrage from prospective voters over the government’s (as of yet) unfulfilled promise to reduce energy bills. This failure has become tangled with the drive to reach net zero and the misconception that it is clean power and renewables that are driving up prices, rather than the UK’s ongoing over-reliance on imported natural gas. Campaign leaflets handed out by Reform, mocked up as electricity bills, claimed costs will rise by £300 under Starmer’s government. In the end Reform won in Runcorn by six votes, overturning Labour’s 14,700-vote majority.

Since the energy price hikes following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, tackling the cost-of-living crisis has obviously been a crucial issue among voters. The UK has some of the highest energy costs in Europe as the price of energy is pinned to whichever source is in the highest use (which for Britain is typically gas). It therefore makes sense that the removal of an annual payment from pensioners – some of whom are among the most vulnerable in society – has not been looked kindly upon. Labour may have enjoyed a reprieve on this, if energy bills themselves had started to decrease. But on 1 April, gas and electricity bills for millions of households actually rose, to around £1,849 a year – a jump of £111. Energy debts across the country are currently at a record high of £3.8bn.

Ed Miliband and his team have long-term plans to fix this. Clean Power 2030 – a distinct pre-election goal – provided some of the party’s most detailed manifesto commitments. Weaning the UK off natural gas and onto abundant renewable energy (produced via solar panels and wind turbines) will, eventually, lower energy costs. But the government’s muddled communications around this have clearly not been enough to stave off the straightforward attack lines put forward by Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, and his deputy, Richard Tice (and, to less electoral reward, from Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives). There is no need to speculate that we have entered a new phase of the net zero culture wars – today’s results are evidence that they have already begun.

Indeed, criticism of the government’s approach to energy bills is not limited to the right. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite the Union (a major Labour backer) has consistently raged at Ministers for overseeing the Winter Fuel Payment cut. This culminated in Unite’s tabling of a motion in opposition to the cut at last year’s Labour Party Conference, which was eventually voted through by delegates. Unite have also been sceptical of Labour’s drive for net zero. Tony Blair’s recent intervention – saying the climate debate had become “irrational” – has increased the opposition from the government’s own side.

Now, as the local election results trickle in, confirming that Labour is really being threatened by an insurgent and increasingly economically radical Reform, there is clearly an argument for reinstating the benefit, at least until Miliband’s energy policies have had their desired effect and reduced people’s bills. Polling from More in Common shows that the Winter Fuel Payment is the best-known Labour policy – with almost 90 per cent of awareness. A recent report by Persuasion UK found it to be the main reason for voters switching from Labour. That decision, taken by Rachel Reeves nine months ago, has left a damaging and lasting legacy. If no lessons are learnt from its influence on today’s results, and the resentment it has caused among voters is left to fester, it could still wreak more havoc.