It’s conference time, and this year the Labour Party is flogging hope to its supporters. Not just hope, but “hope again” – a crafty bit of spin to remind us of Labour’s 1990s heyday when Tony Blair had a rapidly growing economy and hopeful vibes to sell. But unlike the early flush days of New Labour, hope is just about all Andy Burnham has. And with empty pockets, he has to figure out how he’ll find the cash to pay for his big promises on social care, defence and just about everything else.

Cue the p word – a panic about pensions almost always emerges when politicians try to talk about the issue of old people and how to look after them. Burnham announced today in his speech at conference that in 2030 he would scrap the triple lock. But he hadn’t even made that speech before the briefing wars were in full swing. Union bosses warned the PM that scrapping the triple lock on pensions would be “morally wrong”, while former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane has called for it to be scrapped, with money redirected towards helping young people.

Almost every political party views the triple lock as something of a sacred cow – and tampering with it a real vote loser if handled badly – despite the fact that the Institute for Fiscal Studies put the future cost of the policy “anywhere between £5bn and £40bn per year”.

The welfare state as it currently stands is a bloated and unnecessary burden, with too many people relying on the state, from NEETs to off-sick-for-anxiety types. But the abstract ideal of a nation providing for the infirm, disabled and the elderly is one worth arguing for. Say what you like about the triple lock, but it has upped the income of older citizens during a time when many of them need it. This is a good – indeed a moral – responsibility for a society to fulfil.

It’s also true that the celebrated fact that we’re living longer necessitates some serious thinking about how to meet the needs of an ageing population. Two cheers for Burnham for making social care such a big issue at conference – only two because he is hardly the first prime minister to promise something new when it comes to caring for granny.

Part of the problem is that so much of the discussion of policies like the triple lock ends up mired in ugly generational politics. Politicians have convinced themselves that they should listen to young voters – many of whom can’t conceive of next week, let alone their twilight years – who increasingly seem to want to go to war with their grandparents.

They point the finger at older people, branding them selfish for daring to want to stay in their family home once their kids have flown the nest. This class-blind analysis of poor youngsters unable to get on the housing ladder vs fat-cat grandads drawing a pension while sitting on piles of cash has dominated discussion for too long. Aside from the fact that the pension age has been pushed back – and many grandparents are now engaged in intensive, unpaid childcare – most old people are not living it up on the dime of struggling taxpayers.

What is perhaps obvious to everyone except the Labour Party is that reforming the triple lock will do nothing to change the economic situation all ages now face. It’s getting to the point at which we need James Carville to hop on a plane and shout “grow the economy, stupid” at every member of our current government. From high energy bills to environmental strangleholds and an inability to be honest about the debt we face, the triple lock is the least of our worries.

Andy Burnham has set himself up as the nation’s therapist, daring us to “hope again”. We don’t need a therapist, we need a leader who can take the challenge of our stagnant economy seriously.