My love-in with Labour is already over after two months – here’s why

My love-in with the Labour government lasted about two months.

I was down with Silver Fox Starmer and his new Downing Street kitten; club diva Angela Rayner on the decks in Ibiza made me smile. But it only lasted until this week’s Commons debate, where Tory MP Graham Stuart raised the issue of single person discount for council tax in the context of the government scrapping the winter fuel allowance for many pensioners.

Stuart said the council tax discount “is so important to pensioners, who are already losing out because of the absence of the winter fuel allowance”, and asked Rayner to guarantee that she would not scrap it. She would not.

And this is where my hackles raised, higher than the £592 a year extra that I will have to pay to my bankrupt Croydon Council if the 25 per cent discount to single households is scrapped.

Currently, anyone over 18 (and not just pensioners, Mr Stuart) living alone in a property, or with exempt people – live-in carers, students, anyone with a severe mental illness – can claim the discount, because a full council tax bill is based on at least two adults living in a home. According to ONS statistics, almost 1 in 3 households in the UK – 8.3 million – only have one person. You can see Labour’s Treasury team licking their lips as greedily as a cat who’s OD’d on Dreamies over the extra income they would gain to plug the £22bn financial black hole they were left with by the Tories.

But scrapping the discount (which isn’t much of a discount, merely a minor adjustment) would reveal the new government as steaming hypocrites, as big as their Tory predecessors.

Rayner promised Stuart that her government would not raise council tax – well, only for single people, who don’t seem to matter to her. And in his recent doom-laden speech, the prime minister said the October Budget would be painful, and that “those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden”. Presumably Mr Starmer believes that those of us who live alone are built like The Rock as he thinks we can take a massive hit if he removes the 25 per cent discount. But we can’t.

Last year, financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown calculated that singles pay an extra £860 a month for monthly bills compared to couples, adding up to just over £10,000 a year. How can the government really be looking to take money from people who already face a huge financial burden?

It’s bad enough for those who are single and without children to have to listen to Starmer talk about “hard-working families” all the time, but to ask us to pay more council tax, towards children we don’t have while there’s still no commitment to social care for those of us who don’t have families to look after us in our old age, is deeply unfair.

As a socialist, I believe that we should all contribute to society by paying our fair share towards it and supporting those in need – so I’m happy to pay towards education, health and public services for everyone. But the idea of taking even more cash from me for services I haven’t ever used is a low blow.

Single households are already a laughing stock – it’s not only JD Vance who’s doubling down on childless cat ladies, the whole world is giving us a kicking for being alone. I’ve always worked hard and paid my taxes on my never-very-fabulous salary, but I’m seen as an unkind person for wanting a little financial support by way of a council tax reduction. I can’t just make a live-in partner appear in order to halve my household bills, so all I want is some recognition from the government that my situation, and that of millions of others, deserves as much thought as those with families.

In his first speech as prime minister, Starmer said: “Your government should treat every single person in this country with respect.” But it looks like there could be no respect for those who already happily give more than their fair share.

Try a bit harder with tax evaders rather than those of us who can’t afford a holiday due to single supplements, Mr Starmer.