During the 2017 general election campaign, Rachel Reeves shared a Labour poster from 1945 promising a decent pension with the caption: “Love this poster from 1945. This time again, it’s Labour who will stand up for pensioners, defending the triple lock and winter fuel payments.”
A week earlier Angela Rayner, now Deputy Prime Minister, (huh?) had said: “Pensioners will be worried with cuts to pensions, death tax for social care, winter fuel allowance cuts, Tories - the nasty party #ToryManifesto”.
How two-faced is that?
It's a joke alright - in very bad taste.
Imagine the outrage and righteous indignation of Reeves & Raynor if the Tories had scrapped the winter fuel allowance.
Not only did they not do that, in the winter of 22/23, in addition to retaining the Winter Fuel Allowance, they gave every household £400, not means tested. Doesn't sound very 'nasty' to me. Furthermore, when it comes to balancing the books, during the Pandemic, the Tory government (AKA 'nasty party') distributed £68.9 billion of furlough payments to 1.3 million employers covering 11.7 million individual jobs, and £28.1 billion over five grants to 2.9 million self-employed people.