They say that history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. That is to say, while there are always different combinations of particular circumstances that apply at any given moment, there are still major recurring themes.

One of these appears to be the tendency of incoming Labour governments to mistreat millions of pensioner households – and of this newspaper to use its campaigning muscle to stop them from getting away with it.

During Tony Blair’s first New Labour term, the Daily Express launched a crusade for a “pensioners’ tenner” – a £10 per week uplift in the state pension. We did this after the then Chancellor Gordon Brown authorised an increase of a derisory 75 pence.

Hundreds of thousands of readers filled in campaign coupons which were then delivered to Downing Street. While the 75p rise went ahead, such was the outcry that the very next year there were increases of £5 for single pensioners and £8 for couples as Labour tried to claw back lost goodwill.

They never seem to learn, do they? A quarter of a century later and the crusading Express was back in Downing Street yesterday (MON) delivering a 150,000-signature petition alongside campaigning group Silver Voices demanding today’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves abandons her monstrous plan to take the winter fuel allowance away from around 90 per cent of pensioners.

This single measure, which was not contained or even hinted at in Labour’s election manifesto, has done more than any other to kill off goodwill for Keir Starmer’s new administration. There are growing fears, amid a rise in the domestic energy price cap of almost £150, that it could lead to a huge spike in excess winter deaths. Perhaps 4,000 extra elderly people can be expected to die prematurely this winter because they cannot afford to keep the heating on during cold weather.

This is the lens through which every other Labour controversy – from the row over free clothes and concert tickets, to inflation-busting pay deals for favoured trade unions – now gets viewed. Novice ministers can expect no mercy for themselves when they are complicit in such an outrage against senior citizens struggling to get by on incomes as low as £1,000 per month.

Silver Voices believes there is still time for Ms Reeves to implement some drastic damage-limitation by resetting her means test and ensuring that all pensioners with incomes below the higher tax rate threshold carry on getting the allowance. Its director Dennis Reed is surely correct to accuse ministers of having broken a bond of trust with older voters, “without any warning and with no manifesto backing”.

The truth is that rookie chancellor Reeves blundered badly by embracing this savage measure at the behest of Treasury officials who had tried to force it upon several previous chancellors but always found themselves rebuffed. The British people have an innate sense of fairness and decency and the Reeves policy fails on both counts.

Though she may consider it too damaging to her authority and her pride to conduct a full U-turn when she delivers her Budget tomorrow (WED), it is in fact already obvious that she will have to give substantial ground in the months ahead. Labour’s plummeting poll ratings will simply not recover without it. Perhaps there will be a pledge to restore the allowance next year to most or all of those losing it this year. Perhaps there will be other support to cushion the blow. Whatever there is, it better be good.

Ultimately, it was Blair who forced the stubborn Brown into seeing the error of his ways a generation ago. Starmer now needs to do the same to Reeves. One seldom-used title of the Prime Minister, after all, is “First Lord of the Treasury”. That title arose hundreds of years ago out of the widespread understanding that control of the public purse-strings was the most important source of political power. It is not something that any wise premier simply outsources to a chancellor.

The message to Starmer and Reeves must be that they have already lost. They have abandoned the common ground of reasonable opinion without any popular mandate and are currently adopting an unsustainable and illegitimate stance.

This newspaper will not cease campaigning to force them to concede on this matter despite wishing this new government well, as it wishes all new British governments well.

It would be very much better had those at the top of the government shown better judgment at the outset. It is too late for that now. But it is not too late for Reeves to learn some lessons from political history.

It was another Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, who devised a pithy and concise “law of holes” which ran as follows: when you are in one, stop digging. Those who fail to follow that advice tend not to last long at the top of British politics.