Sorry is the hardest word at Westminster, while Daily Mail columnist’s memoir is an exercise in score-settling
One of the biggest mysteries in Westminster surrounds the inability of politicians of all parties to apologise. For anything. Most of the rest of us go through life saying sorry on a regular basis. For being late, for not doing something we had said we would, for forgetting. And by and large an apology does the trick. The person we have let down feels heard and all is forgiven.
But politicians would rather die than apologise. Take the winter fuel allowance U-turn. Almost the first thing that the new Labour government did was to cut the payment for almost every pensioner. It was Rachel Reeves’s way of showing the financial markets that she could be trusted to take the tough decisions in the interests of fiscal responsibility. Only it turned out that most people didn’t think the government should be forcing some of the most vulnerable members of society to choose between heating and eating.
Cue the eventual reverse ferret from Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions a few weeks ago. And today we got the details. Any pensioner earning £35K or under would now be entitled to the payment. What had started out as a policy to save the Treasury £1.35bn would now, due to the increasing number of old people claiming pension credit, end up costing the country more than if the system had remained the same.
