KEIR Starmer’s decision to take the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) from all but the poorest pensioners will “stick like Thatcher and the milk” and continue to dent his popularity among voters, an ex-Labour MP has said.
The Prime Minister has seen his approval ratings plummet over his first two months in post, with a More In Common poll last week showing his net approval had plunged to a record low of -20, which was a drop of 32 points in just 50 days. It was also the lowest score Starmer had ever recorded with the think tank.
A YouGov poll a week previous confirmed just a third of people in the UK now have a favourable view of Starmer. YouGov reported this was the fewest since June and down from 44% after the election.
Ex-Labour MP and MEP Les Huckfield said he felt Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to cut the WFP was the main reason for such a decline in his popularity because it has similar connotations to Thatcher’s “vicious” decision to take free milk away from schoolchildren.
Political expert Dr Neil McGarvey – based at Strathclyde University – also said he felt polls were illustrating people’s disappointment with being promised change but receiving “more of the same”.
In 1971, when she served as education secretary under Edward Heath, Thatcher abolished free milk for children aged seven to 11 which subsequently prompted playground taunts of “Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher” and the slogan is still commonly used to this day.
Huckfield – who sat in the Commons during Thatcher’s years in the Cabinet and during her first term as prime minister – said he believed Starmer would find it equally difficult to shake off people's disapproval after making the WFP means-tested from this winter.
He said: “When I was at school, we used to get those half bottles of milk. That was part of the fabric of going to school and people very much understood that. It was Thatcher that stopped all of that and that’s why she became known as Margaret Thatcher the milk snatcher.
“The reason that stuck is that people very well understood the significance. It wasn’t complicated to understand, it was a fairly vicious gesture, and that’s why it stuck.
🚨 BREAKING: Starmer's net approval plunges to record low of -20, a drop of **32pts** in just 50 days. ✅ Approve 25% (-10) ❌ Disapprove 45% (+22) Via @Moreincommon_, 6-9 Sep (+/- vs 22 Jul) pic.twitter.com/Tg8gh8DLOx
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) September 10, 2024
“It’s exactly the same with the Winter Fuel Payments. It comes as a separate payment so you can see it happening and that’s why I think there’s been that dramatic fall in Starmer’s popularity.
“I don’t think it’s because people have misunderstood what Starmer and Reeves are trying to do but I think it’s something they’ve done and people can see it before their eyes.
“This [the Winter Fuel Payment] will stick like Thatcher and the milk. If anyone thinks that the political significance of what Starmer has done is going to fade away, politics just doesn’t work like that.”
The WFP – launched in 1997 – is an annual, tax-free lump sum payment intended to give older people reassurance they can afford to heat their homes in the winter and until now has been universal.
In most years, the amount has been £200 for households where the oldest person is under 80 and £300 for households with someone aged 80 or over.
The Government has said it is expected to save around £1.3 billion in 2024/25 and £1.5bn in subsequent years and was brought in as part of trying to tackle a £22bn “black hole” Reeves claimed the previous Conservative government left in their wake.
But Huckfield (above), who is a lecturer in business management at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “I teach economics. The media keeps thinking that it’s all about balancing the budget and getting the books right.
“It isn’t anything to do with that. When you’ve got your own currency as the UK has, and you’ve got your own independent central bank, if you want to create more money, you can do it.
“We’re talking about a tiny saving, and you really wonder if it's worth the political losses they are going to face.”
McGarvey said polls suggested Starmer’s government was struggling to gather momentum and paying the price for promising change and not delivering it.
He also suggested that while the approval rating dip is unlikely to bother Starmer so early in his tenure, it could have implications for the upcoming Holyrood election.
He told the Sunday National: “[Labour are] now being linked with the austerity politics of the previous government.
“I think the rising of expectations during the election campaign period in April and May, the promises that were made, I think that will all be playing into these polling numbers.
“The first act of the new government was to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment, they’ve not done anything about welfare or the two-child cap, and at the end of the summer, there were the riots instigated by the far-right groups. There’s a negative energy that seems to have been built up over the past month or so around the government.
“I don’t think Keir Starmer will be that worried at this stage. A new government, if it’s going to do unpopular things, it’s best to get them done quickly. The challenge is obviously turning that around at some point beyond the mid-term.
“It also does have knock-on implications for territorial elections if the Welsh and the Scots are voting in 2026. The Labour Party in Scotland could suffer.”
