Loss avoidance is one of the strongest forces in the world. It’s a fundamental of human nature – and therefore politics – that once we’ve been given something, we don’t easily give it up. It follows that in politics, it’s much easier to give people something than it is to take it away. Just ask Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who tried to take away a slice of the winter fuel allowance that Gordon Brown gave pensioners in the 1990s. The resulting fury helped doom Starmer.
This is the grim background to the talk that Andy Burnham might look again at the triple lock, the coalition-era policy of increasing the state pension by the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent. Some of the very smart economists who are advising Burnham are telling him – rightly – that the policy is a millstone around the neck of the British state. This is not the first time this debate has been had, and I fear it will not be the last.
The triple lock is arguably the perfect test of both Burnham and politics in general. It’s a symbol of how the system – again and again – does stuff that everyone responsible knows is stupid yet doesn’t change. Across the board, politicians know the triple lock is unsustainable and part of our structural problem that locks in ever higher spending, meaning the state can’t do other stuff. Yet across the board, they back away from changing it.
