Labour’s drubbing at this month’s local elections has had an immediate impact on policy, as after month’s of criticism Keir Starmer has signalled a screeching U-turn on means testing winter fuel payments.

By effectively taking the winter fuel payment away from most pensioners, the Government saved the Exchequer around £1.3bn a year. It was also a key part of Labour’s efforts to convince the public the Conservatives had left an irresponsibly dire fiscal inheritance, defined by furious admonishments of the so-called ‘£22bn black hole’. Tough decisions, Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves argued, were necessary to balance the books. The fact the decision would have a political blowback was made into a virtue.

But it’s clear now they underestimated the scale of the political cost. All winter, newspapers ran with stories of pensioners who were now forced to spend all day riding on buses or in public libraries just to keep warm. The risk that the policy would come to define the Government in the minds of many voters was too large to endure.

U-turns, though, come with their own set of challenges. The Government expended vast amounts of political capital in its first few months attempting to convince the public that the policy was absolutely necessary. One Cabinet Minister argued the policy prevented a “run on the pound”. The question many will be asking now is “was any of that true?”.

There are also risks in the way U-turns are carried out. Conventional wisdom dictates that there should be a full reversal of the policy, alongside an admission that it was wrong and an attempt to sweep it all under the rug. But that is not what Starmer is proposing. The Government, Starmer says, is looking at ways of increasing the threshold at which pensioners can qualify.

This is potentially very difficult: the reason why the means test was placed at £11,500 is because it was packaged with pension credit, a well-established if complicated part of the welfare system. Setting the means test at a higher level will add a great deal of complexity and cost to test eligibility – potentially wiping out any savings to the Treasury and why Tory governments never cut winter fuel payments themselves.

This week’s decision reinforces Starmer’s political ruthlessness. We have seen flashes of this before, in his decision to sack former Chief of Staff Sue Gray and in the way he ditched policies from the 2020 Labour leadership election in pursuit of electability and credibility with the median voter. But the decision also shows Starmer is willing to abandon key Government policies too.

(Photo provided by the BBC)