This catalogue of tone-deaf U-turns will come back to haunt Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer cannot have much enjoyed his last session of Prime Minister’s Questions for the year. The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, did her job and embarrassed Sir Keir with a timely reminder of the misery being inflicted on older people by the cuts to the winter fuel allowance.

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This is a move which, reportedly, the prime minister privately now concedes was a “mistake” – and which he must now regret. Hitting Britain’s hard-up pensioners with this unwelcome Christmas present was one of the earliest of the blunders in policy and in presentation that the government has made since it came to power; yet, despite the slump in their poll ratings, there seems to be no end in sight to the missteps.

In the months since the election, communications have become Labour’s greatest weakness, where once they were a formidable strength. The winter fuel cut was a nasty surprise, deeply unpopular – and there was no inkling of anything like it being contemplated by the party before Labour ministers were safely ensconced behind their ministerial desks.

Ms Badenoch also made a passing reference to another U-turn, and one even less pre-ordained: the plight of the Waspi women. But it was backbenchers from his own party and others who repeatedly rose to skewer Sir Keir and his colleagues.

He was asked whether he understood their pain – and how he can now justify denying them the “justice” that he and others promised them apparently in good faith before the general election. It is not so much the merits of the case that are causing the government difficulties but the glaringly awkward fact that Sir Keir and his senior colleagues publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the campaign waged by the Women Against State Pension Inequality.

Rightly, the prime minister seems ill at ease when his past remarks are played back to him. These women have undoubtedly been disadvantaged by the planned changes in the pension age made in the 1990s – and Labour backed them.