Labour’s betrayal of Waspi women is a sign its problems now go far beyond pensioners

Saying one thing to get elected and doing something else after winning worked brilliantly for Keir Starmer… once upon a time.

He became Labour leader with a set of promises that he quietly dropped, before going on to win a landslide in the general election. But it is not proving so easy to shake off the promises he has made on his way to Downing Street.

The latest group to feel betrayed is the Waspi women – those born in the 1950s who say their state pension was “stolen” from them when, in the mid-1990s, the pension age was dramatically raised, from 60 to 65.

Only two and a half years ago, Starmer said: “It’s a real injustice – we need to do something about it.”

On Tuesday, Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, announced what the government had decided to do about it: nothing.

This could be defended as a tough but necessary decision – if Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Kendall herself had not given the impression before the election that they would “do something about it”.

If they had said in opposition that the women had their sympathy, but that they couldn’t promise anything because the public finances would be tight, they might have got away with it.

Instead, as Tony Blair once said: “Your average rottweiler on speed can be a lot more amiable than a pensioner wronged.” Now large numbers of pensioners feel that they have been twice wronged, over Waspi compensation and over the winter fuel payment cut.

No wonder a song called “Freezing at Christmas” by Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers is at No 1 in the download charts.

But “Sir Starmer” has an even bigger problem than alienating the one age group that is most likely to turn out to vote. He has a serious problem with saying one thing and doing another. At a time when trust in politicians is already low, this is bad for him and dangerous for democracy.

The most damaging U-turn is on tax. Labour fought the election saying they had no plans for significant tax rises apart from the specific taxes in the manifesto… and then brought in the biggest tax-raising Budget for 30 years. Their sophistry on the difference between a national insurance rise on “working people” and one on “employers” is unconvincing. And a £22bn “black hole” in this year’s accounts cannot explain a £40bn-a-year rise in the tax take by the end of this parliament.

Again, the policy is right – taxes had to rise to avoid the collapse of public services – but Labour failed to give itself enough cover in opposition to take the difficult but necessary decisions in government.

The result is a disaster for Starmer, as he discovered in his round of interviews in Estonia last night. Because of the “betrayals” over tax, winter fuel and the Waspi women, he is unable to take credit for other decisions that he has taken, which ought to be applauded by the voters.

The decision to pay up at last for the infected blood scandal was brave and right – and was cynically ducked by the Conservatives. If the government had to choose between compensating the victims of infected blood products and compensating people who didn’t know that the pension age had gone up, it made the right choice. But Starmer gains no benefit in the court of public opinion, which is distracted by promises broken.

The prime minister pleaded with Harry Cole, political editor of The Sun, yesterday, saying: “I want Sun readers to be better off … we froze the fuel duty.”

Yes, he froze the tax on petrol, which he shouldn’t have done because petrol this year and last was cheaper in real terms than at any time this century, and we should be encouraging people to go electric. But he gains no credit for that brazen opportunism because Sun readers are worried about taxes going up and winter fuel payments going down.

Instead, Starmer has offended one group of the electorate after another. Admittedly, pensioners, employers, farmers and private school parents tend not to vote Labour. But Labour cannot afford to lose votes in any section of the population, and the Labour-leaning parts of the electorate also notice when Starmer says one thing and does another.