KEVIN MAGUIRE: 'Restoring the disastrously axed £300 Winter Fuel Allowance would give Labour a bigger boost than bashing migrants'

Restoring the disastrously axed £300 Winter Fuel Allowance would give Labour a bigger boost than bashing migrants.

Keir Starmer’s learning the wrong lessons from his UK Government’s plummeting popularity and Hard Right huckster Nigel Farage’s Reform surge.

Because the Prime Minister and his party fell from grace because he and they scored terrible own goals, the fuel payment cut to 10million pensioners arguably the worst though abandoned Waspi women and disabled folk having their financial crutches kicked away may beg to differ.

Failing to correct these corrosive errors, U-turning to recover lost ground, will allow running sores to fester. And in legitimising rather than challenging Farage’s migration views to woo home Reform voters, the PM’s deliberately ignoring, as Left-wing MP Clive Lewis argues, the yearning of those lost from Labour for policies such as water nationalisation.

Along with living standards and the quality of public services, I readily accept migration is a top three issue. The choice for Starmer was to confront, concede or change the subject on not only who and in what numbers people come into the country but their value and contribution to society.

Unfortunately he and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper sound as if they’ve conceded to Reform even if their positions are more nuanced, less prejudiced.

Yes, the Tories have zero credibility after net migration nudged one million in a single year before dipping to around three-quarters of a million.

Yet so too does a Farage lacking any workable policy after selling Brexit as a migration cut and it increased. But tougher migration laws aren’t the cause of, or answer to, Labour’s predicament.

Starmer standing up in Downing Street ever so humble, adopting a masochism strategy, apologising and fixing what he broke, would refuel Labour’s prospects. Today he’ll deliver the wrong speech.

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THE over-hyped trade deal with Trump is like Dangeld paid by English Anglo-Saxons to stop Danish Viking invaders pillaging, raping and murdering.

Starmer may have made the best of a bad situation yet the British car industry and other exporters were undeniably in a better position before deranged Donald’s rampage. So come back Joe Biden, all is forgiven.

And the deal with India adds only a measly 0.1% to UK GDP by 2040 which is a fraction of 4% lost quitting the European Union so there is zero Brexit bonus.

Starmer talking of improving EU relations is encouraging yet he’s tied our hands behind our backs by ruling out rejoining the valuable Single Market and Customs Union. Or could he break a manifesto pledge, arguing with some legitimacy that Trump changed what’s best for Britain?____

SHAREHOLDERS revolting against British Gas owner Centrica paying Fat Cat Chris O’Shea around £12m over two years took me back to Cedric the Pig. Then boss Cedric Brown was accused of having his snout in the trough after a 75% rise to…£475,000. Corporate excess is worse these days. Perhaps we need another shaming campaign.

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FRIDAY will be one of those rare moments when I’ll wish I’d become an MP to vote for social reformer Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill, a humane right championed by terminally ill Esther Rantzen. Scaremongering and ideological opponents shouldn’t stop others taking control of their passing. MPs against assisted dying don’t have to have an assisted death. Stopping those who do want one is state cruelty.

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AUSTERITY? Not for feather-bedded Royals when public funding’s tripled in real terms since 2012, the Sovereign Grant soaring to £132m from £31m per year to make Buckingham Palace fit for a King dipping his hand into taxpayers’ pockets rather than paying himself. Weekend protests by anti-monarchy group Republic in London, Cardiff and Edinburgh weren’t a sign of imminent revolution but huge subsidies for an immensely rich family are the medieval hereditary monarchy’s Achilles’ heel.