Members of Britain’s Labour party narrowly voted against the government’s decision to limit winter fuel payments to the elderly on Wednesday, a symbolic move piling pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer who has backed the cuts to help stabilise the economy.
Starmer, who sought to lift the mood at the governing party’s annual conference with his speech on Tuesday, has stood by the cuts to payments to help the elderly cover fuel bills, saying short-term pain was necessary to spur economic growth.
But Labour delegates at the conference voted against the government with a show of hands at the conference in the English city of Liverpool following an impassioned speech by Sharon Graham, head of the Unite union, one of Britain’s biggest.
To a standing ovation, Graham said she did not understand “how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners but leave the super rich untouched”.
“This is not what people voted for, it is the wrong decision and it needs to be reversed.”
Starmer says he was forced to make tough decisions, such as the cuts, after the previous Conservative government left a 22-billion-pound ($29-billion) black hole in public finances – a charge the Conservatives deny.
But the row over the cuts cast a pall over the conference and looks set to continue to be a point of conflict between some British unions, traditional backers of Labour, and a government focused on reining in spending to meet its fiscal targets.
Graham said the fiscal rules were “self-imposed” and the new government should take lessons from the post-World War Two Labour administration which she described as understanding the need for real change rather than being “better managers”.
“The decision to keep fiscal rules is hanging like a noose around our necks,” she said.
