Gordon Brown introduced the winter fuel payment shortly after becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, following his party’s landslide victory. Rachel Reeves abolished the winter fuel payment shortly after becoming Chancellor in 2024, following her party’s landslide victory. Since others are shy of saying so, I want to point out that Mr Brown was wrong and Ms Reeves is right. The payment was a wasteful gimmick, addressing a problem better handled by the benefit system. If at least 80 per cent of the beneficiaries of something intended for the poor are not poor, the winter payment is ridiculous. Mr Brown loved such special devices because he instinctively liked to complicate welfare to create more dependency. For the same reason, he introduced free television licences for the elderly in 1999 (now also abolished). Ms Reeves is right that this government, if it sticks to its promise, will make all pensioners richer in this parliament by perpetuating the Tories’ triple-lock state pension – a much more sensible (though hideously expensive) system because most recipients will have paid for it, indirectly, through National Insurance over their working years.
Labour’s real problem is that it hid its intentions from the electorate, calculating – no doubt correctly – that the uproar in the campaign would have been huge. Now it is clear it is taking money from oldies while giving lots more to strikers, the uproar is scarcely less huge. The politics, though empathically not the economics, suggest that the Chancellor will feel she has to destroy capital formation to placate her furious party. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband’s rush towards net zero threatens to impose domestic heating costs way beyond anything the winter fuel payment ever covered.
On Sunday we went to Eton as guests of our old and dear friend, Nicholas Coleridge, to see him installed as Provost. Not even Ms Reeves’s 20 per cent VAT on school fees cast a pall on the ceremonies. Nick banged on the door of School Yard, was admitted and spoke to the whole school (which is much too big for any building), flanked by the Visitor, the Bishop of Lincoln and the King’s representative, the Earl of Rosslyn, who was for a long time a policeman and, when I was at Eton, was considered the prettiest boy in the school. Then we entered the chapel. In the service, the Provost swears his oath which ends ‘in case I should resign, or be removed by legitimate authority… I will render up all the goods, property and possessions of the College which shall be in my charge to the officers of the College’. One wonders what past Cardinal Wolsey-style grab of fixtures and fittings could have made this provision necessary.
It is a sort of miracle that Nick has become Provost, because his background is in running the glossy magazines of Condé Nast, not the sort of career normally favoured by the gowned dignitaries of great academic institutions. But it all makes sense. Of all my contemporaries at school and university, he is, I think, the most successful. By that I mean that he works out with the greatest care – and flair – exactly what his task is and performs it with great zest, precision and consideration for his co-workers. He also understands the doctrine of ripe time – when to act and when to do nothing, when to arrive, when to move and when to leave. I re-read his memoirs The Glossy Years in time for the occasion. They are extremely funny, but they are also, though I don’t think he intended them as such, a guide to worldly success and, much rarer, to combining such success with personal happiness. Throughout his life, Nick has been touchingly loyal to his family, his friends and, indeed, his old school.
After the service, I talked to Michael Meredith, Eton’s most enduring master, who is still there, 60 years after arriving, because he eventually became the College Librarian, and raised the collection to the greatest height of any school in the world. Michael is now College Librarian Emeritus. When he began, he was the second master ever to have taught English at Eton (all literature taught until then, had been Biblical, classical or foreign). ‘Sir Nicholas is my sixth provost,’ he told me, ‘The first one, Claude Elliott, was dreadful. I was introduced to him as teaching English. “English!” he said, “Jeans and homosexuality”, and stalked off.’ It is true that the former may have coincided with the arrival of English, but surely even Elliott would have noticed that the latter had been around for rather longer.
Although the looming Starmer Terror could be ignored for the day, another unwelcome feature of our time could not be. In January, Thames Water flooded some of the boys’ houses with sewage after heavy rain, forcing pupils to return to school late. This year, the same company, digging in Eton High Street, severed a gas pipe. Several boys’ houses have no hot water or heating and we all had cold fish for our lunch.
As I surveyed the hundreds of pupils, I noticed how successfully Eton ticks the diversity box. Forty years on, I predict, Etonians will have been banned from holding office in Britain but will be running the Chinese Communist party.
As I write, the news breaks that this paper has been sold, to Sir Paul Marshall. It comes as a great relief that the thing is settled. The price paid shows how astonishingly the paper has prospered and how highly Sir Paul esteems it. A few days ago, Sir Henry Keswick rang me, having got wind of a deal. He has been very fond of the paper ever since he bought it almost 50 years ago. ‘I paid £100,000 for it,’ said Henry, ‘What will it go for now?’ ‘Guess,’ I said. ‘£5 million?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘the rumoured figure is £100 million.’ There was a brief digestive silence at the other end.
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