How Britain's Pensioners are becoming Starmer's Kulaks
The Dripping Misanthropy of the Labour Government
In post-revolutionary Russia, the Kulaks were comparatively wealthy peasants that, because of their modest land ownership, were perceived by Stalin and others as not being wholeheartedly on board with the Bolshevik project.
Historian Robert Conquest defines those labelled as ‘kulaks’ as: "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbors". As such they were regarded as enemies of poorer peasants and were thought of by Lenin as: "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten themselves during famines".
What followed was a genocidal programme of grain confiscation (see image above) which led to famine. Kulaks had their farms seized, were murdered outright or deported to labor camps. Following Stalin’s order for the kulaks to be “liquidated as a class”, the programme of Dekulakisation led to the death of millions.
I thought of the Stalinist purge of the kulaks while watching Liz Kendall, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, while at the dispatch box this week, making the case for the removal of the winter fuel allowance. Far from being hesitant or diffident at introducing a measure that could, according to Labour’s own calculations while in opposition, result in the death from cold of 4,000 pensioners each winter, she exuded venom.
The Father of the House, Edward Leigh, likened the move in a slightly bruised tone to “a punishment beating.” And that is exactly what it is. Pensioners are being punished, much like the kulaks, for a multitude of sins which includes - but is not limited to:
voting Leave/Conservative/Reform
being racist, Far Right and anti-immigrant
sitting on assets such as homes and private pensions
clinging to carbon-emitting gas boilers and petrol vehicles
being a drain on “our NHS” by virtue of being elderly and living longer.
During the election campaign Starmer claimed that Labour would be the champion of “working people”; when pushed to define this, he said something vague about people that couldn’t write a cheque to get themselves out of trouble. Post-election, the penny has dropped that among those unambiguously outside the “working people” circle are pensioners. As we approach the October budget, witness the difficult decisions that have not been ruled out:
removal of single person council tax discount
re-evaluation of council tax bands
removal of free travel passes
Ably assisted by Treasury officials, Labour is planning a twenty-first century equivalent of Stalin’s grain quotas with Britain’s pensioners in mind. That the removal of the winter fuel payment will so obviously damage the poorest pensioners in the country matters not a jot.
What took the country by surprise this week is not merely the vindictiveness of the move but how little effort Labour made to justify it. Nobody takes the confected “black hole” argument seriously in the context of eye-watering pay settlements to public sector workers. Ed Milliband’s multi-billion pound climate aid payments to developing countries seem calculated to troll those pensioners that now feel they cannot afford to turn up the thermostat. If they were in any doubt before the election, it is now abundantly clear that their government regards them as a blight on the planet.
This perhaps explains Labour’s complete lack of concern over the “optics”. As New Labour in the late 1990s, the party was obsessed with presentation and news management. Everything in government was subordinate to control of the news agenda and executing the “grid”. Can you imagine Peter Mandelson planning a news day that included both removal of the winter fuel payment and prisoners on early release popping champagne corks outside HMP Wandsworth?
The truth is, Starmer, for all his thin-skinned inability to take criticism, no longer cares about optics. They are in power with an enormous majority and can do anything. Unless you are part of Labour’s client state - i.e. either an illegal migrant or a public sector employee - brace yourselves for a five-year punishment beating.