The new rules – making any pensioner with an income of up to £35,000 eligible – still exclude us, but now, vitally, help all those older people who do depend on the benefit. They were physically and emotionally harmed by the policy of the unforgivably high-handed Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, whose strategy seems to be to burden those with least power and money in our society. This turnabout was the result of fierce campaigning by older citizens and others and the recent local elections, when older voters abandoned Labour.
I have befriended Mr Jenkins, who worked on the railways. He, a widower with no children, endures deprivation without respite. The last time we were bussing off somewhere, he was livid: “Nobody in the Conservatives or Labour cares. They want us to die, to save them the little money they hand to us. We are not scroungers. People like me have worked all our lives. When elections come, they knock on our doors. Democracy is just a trick.”
Deprived pensioners must share Mr Jenkins’s despair and cynicism. So too other Britons whose legitimate needs have been disregarded by successive governments. It’s tremendously sad. And, in the end, tremendously bad for our nation and those who govern us.
After this fiasco, which secretary of state or minister would dare to remind pensioners that the triple lock has resulted in a good many of them ending up being more advantaged than many young people, all children in low income families, and the mentally and physically disabled of working age? Only a small proportion of those working hard today for better futures will get what many of us pensioners have.
As the Resolution Foundation points out, “over the past four decades, the relative poverty rate for pensioners has fallen from a peak of 41 per cent in 1989 to 18 per cent… Pensioners used to be, by far, the most likely to be in poverty – now they are the least likely. This change in the relationship between old age and low income is one of the most profound social and economic changes this country has seen over the past few decades.”
Our days are numbered. Wouldn’t it be gratifying to be remembered for fighting for a fairer country not just for us, but for all?
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