It's almost summer. But the removal of winter fuel payments for pensioners has a long tail

When Labour MPs clamour for a “course correction”, you do not need the skills of GCHQ to decode what they mean. They want the government to spend more money. If they could cajole Rachel Reeves to rummage down the back of the Treasury's sofa to find a bit extra for one particular cause, I know what it would be.

- Andrew Rawnsley

Licking the wounds of their lacerating encounters with disgruntled voters during the May Day elections, Sir Keir Starmer’s footsoldiers report that the most toxic source of discontent with the government is the decision to remove the winter fuel payment from 90% of pensioners. Voters who have not heard of anything else this government has done know about this cut and hate it. Forget the additional billions allocated to the NHS or the breakfast clubs for young schoolchildren or the renationalisation of the rail network. Forget anything potentially voter-pleasing that Sir Keir and his ministers have done since they arrived in office last July. For a lot of people, it is taking away the winter fuel payment that is this government’s most defining act. “Unless something is done, we'll be chased about this on the doorstep all the way up to the next general election,” groans one Labour strategist. Nowhere was this cut trailed in the manifesto. That makes it a shredder of trust and totemic of wider aggravations with the government.

You can say - and with this argument I have some sympathy - that a universal payment of up to £300 regardless of means was a badly targeted Gordon Brown gimmick and ripe for reform. But the cut removes the payment not just from the multimillionaire pensioner who likes to brag that they use it to pay for their Christmas bubbly. It also hits much less affluent pensioners, and at a time when energy bills are inflated. That goes to fairness. You'll struggle to find anyone who voted for a Labour government in the expectation that making already poor pensioners even less well off would be one of the first things it would do.