Why pensioners are about to be handed a further windfall while workers pick up the bill

A key story of this century has been pensioners getting wealthier, with incomes leaping 26 per cent up to 2019, while staff wages have stagnated – but it seems we ain’t seen nothing yet.

A looming decision is poised to underline that trend and make it even harder for Boris Johnson to claim to be leading the party for the workers, with a second on the horizon also favouring the old.

Both will also lay bare the power of the “grey vote” – the one that delivered Brexit, remember – and the cowardice of politicians who fail to challenge it.

First, the near certainty that the elderly will enjoy an extraordinary boon from a quirk of the state pension “triple lock” promise, which will cost up a cool £4bn next April.

The triple lock – which has achieved a status almost akin to Magna Carta, despite being born only in 2010 – ensures pensions rise by whichever is the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5 per cent.

For years, it has shielded the elderly from the post-crash pain of younger generations, but there has been nothing like the impact of earnings growth hitting an expected 8 per cent by this month’s trigger point.

Except pay has not really soared like that, of course – it has simply bounced back from the plunge in earnings when Covid shut down the economy last year, leaving workers no better off at best.

Faced with such an unjustified splurge on older people – just weeks after the education catch-up tsar quit in protest at the rejection of his £14bn plans for school recovery – the Treasury tried to wriggle out.

But all it took was some familiar squealing from the pensioner lobby for No 10 to step into line and the £4bn pension rise is going ahead, it seems.

Longer term, there is the impact of – finally – an autumn answer to the social care crisis, probably centred on a new tax to be paid by all over-40s, as insurance against future catastrophic care costs.

This is desperately needed of course, after a decade of can-kicking, but it will be another draw on younger taxpayers – because the much fairer alternative of a levy on the sale of the homes of older people who have benefitted from the property boom is deemed unthinkable.

Crucially, much of the upfront £10bn bill will presumably have to come from general taxation, as well as for older people with too few years left in work to pay enough into the pot.

Covid has seen the young make incredible sacrifices to protect the old most at risk of dying. Don’t expect that favour to be returned anytime soon.