Are pensioners now untouchable in British politics?
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
Keir Starmer has done his first media round since the u-turn on winter fuel payments, attempting to argue that the country’s finances are now stable and also still reeling from Liz Truss mini budget. 9 million pensioners are now eligible for the benefit. Including many well off couples. Is this really the best use of public money when young families are struggling and child poverty is double the level of pensioner poverty?
Later, the SNPs Stephen Flynn joins us in the studio to talk about Gaza, Reform, the SNPs record in government, and that Hamilton by-election result.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.3 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.7 | Do you think the public want politicians to be honest with them? |
| 0:16.2 | Yes, of course. |
| 0:17.1 | Okay. So can you just be honest about winter fuel allowance that you revassed it because of poor |
| 0:22.4 | local election results? You realised it was really unpopular and you listened to voters. That is the |
| 0:30.2 | truth, isn't it? Well, of course we listen to voters all of the time. That's part and part of being a |
| 0:35.3 | politician. The first question is, did we make the |
| 0:38.4 | right decision in the first place? I believe we did because we needed to stabilise the economy. |
| 0:43.0 | And as a result of that... That is Kirstama saying, yeah, we were right with the winter fuel allowance |
| 0:48.5 | last year and we're right this year. It's not a big U-turn. It's just that we've stabilised the economy. |
| 0:56.4 | Does anyone actually believe that? |
| 0:58.3 | The gap in total spending on children and pensioners has widened by 170% in real terms. |
| 1:07.1 | So why don't we care about the position of young people as much as we seem to care about pensioners? |
| 1:13.6 | Are they simply off limits? Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:21.5 | The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. |
| 1:25.4 | And if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, |
| 1:29.2 | except now it's not a U-turn, it's not a climb down, it's not a policy reversal. They were right |
| 1:35.6 | the first time round to introduce the cap on the winter fuel allowance and they're right again now |
| 1:40.9 | to lift it for 75% of pensioners. I'm not sure anyone is buying the explanation |
| 1:48.9 | that is currently on offer from Kyr Stama downwards. It's very revealing, I think, the fact that |
| 1:57.0 | Stama is insisting that his cabinet ministers go out and defend this deeply contorted logic. |
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