At Labour conference in 1949, the party’s firebrand Health Minister Nye Bevan proudly informed delegates in Blackpool that ‘the language of priorities is the religion of socialism’.
Fast forward 77 years and Andy Burnham’s conference speech in Liverpool yesterday will have had the great hero of the Left spinning in his grave.
By indicating plans to abolish the pensions triple lock – the mechanism which guarantees that the state pension rises by inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent – from 2030, this Labour government has demonstrated a truly warped set of priorities.
Faced with the enormous savings required to fund his universal free care plans, the Prime Minister could have tackled all manner of government waste and spending inefficiencies, from Net Zero madness to our ever-ballooning welfare bill.
Instead, the first pockets Mr Burnham has chosen to pick are those who have worked hard their whole lives, paid their National Insurance and generally done the right thing – the very people the old-fashioned Labour Party once championed.
The hypocrisy from someone so at pains to appear on the side of fairness and honesty is, quite simply, astonishing. And it exposes a profound moral rot at the heart of our governing class.
The first pockets Mr Burnham has chosen to pick are those who have worked hard their whole lives, paid their National Insurance and generally done the right thing, writes Nigel Farage
Because let’s be clear. The state pension is not a handout, nor an act of government charity. It is a fundamental social contract.
British workers pay into the system for the best part of half a century on the explicit understanding that, in return, the nation will provide them with security and dignity in their twilight years.
To break that contract now, when retirees are in their 70s and 80s, with zero ability to re-enter the workforce to plug the gap, is nothing short of a betrayal.
This is precisely why Reform UK stands four-square behind the triple lock. We will keep it. Full stop.
How will we continue to pay for it? Our answer is simple. We will reset government priorities from top to bottom.
We don’t need higher taxes to protect our pensioners.
We simply need a government that stops wasting fortunes on the wrong things. Just look at what we are expected to have spent on migrant accommodation by the end of the decade: £15.3billion. That’s right.
Reform UK would put an immediate stop to this madness by processing claims offshore, stopping the boats dead in their tracks and refusing to hand out taxpayer-funded accommodation to people who have bypassed our laws.
It’s about common sense and finally putting our own people first. Since 2010, £200billion of taxpayers’ money has been frittered away on foreign aid, often to wealthy countries.
Under a Reform UK government, these payments will be capped at £1billion a year. Meanwhile, we will scrap costly Net Zero schemes which will have cost us a staggering £59billion by 2030.
We will cut the ludicrously swollen civil service and ban foreign nationals from claiming welfare. My Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick has already identified £50billion worth of savings on welfare that could be implemented immediately.
Should the government ever break promises made to pensioners who've paid in all their lives?
To break that contract now, when retirees are in their 70s and 80s, is nothing short of a betrayal. This is why Reform UK stands four-square behind the triple lock, writes Nigel Farage
By fixing government spending priorities, keeping the triple lock becomes entirely affordable.
The truth is that Labour has lost all connection with working-class Britain. They view our seniors not as valued citizens who built the country we live in today but as an easy target for Treasury raids whenever they need to plug a hole in their disastrous Budgets. They assume older voters have nowhere else to go.
They are dead wrong. Reform UK will not allow the political class to shortchange the generation that gave everything to this country.
It is time for a government that puts the British people back at the top of the priority list.
And we will fight Labour’s pension betrayal with everything we’ve got.
If Andy Burnham is so desperate to pick a fight with pensioners, he should get on with it and call a General Election now.
The choice, then, for voters who value their state pension will be crystal clear: The party who regard pensioners as a cost to be managed down – and those who will protect them at all costs.
At Reform UK, you can be sure we know whose side we are on.