Pensioners who have worked hard all their lives deserve to live in comfort and dignity. How we treat older generations says a lot about who we are as a nation.

But it’s clear that Sir Keir Starmer does not care about our pensioners. That is the only explanation for his decision to cancel the Winter Fuel Payment for 10 million pensioners, forcing some to make the choice between eating and heating.

As with everything he does, Sir Keir has tried to pin his choices on the previous government. He claimed it’s a choice he did not want to make. On Sunday a member of his cabinet even made the ridiculous suggestion that Labour had to go ahead with these cuts to avoid a run on the pound. But it won’t wash. People are not fools, and they can see through Labour’s falsehoods.

So if the Labour Government say they had no choice, then here are some choices they could have made instead.

Snatching the winter fuel payment off pensioners who need it will save the government around £1.4 billion, setting up Labour’s new energy quango alone will cost roughly 8 times that. On top of that, axing our plans to cut the civil service headcount will cost taxpayer roughly the same. Not to mention the billions Starmer shelled out on no-strings-attached, inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers.

Unlike those public sector workers, many pensioners struggling this winter cannot earn more money if they need to. The Winter Fuel Payment

 is crucial to their heating security, it is why we doubled it following the war in Ukraine and the energy price hikes that followed.

Laid bare before us is Starmer’s nakedly political priority: swelling the size of the state before protecting pensioners.

So this winter, while Labour’s union paymasters warm themselves on the billions they’ve been bunged by the government, it will be some of the most vulnerable people in our society paying the price. Labour certainly has a strange way of showing respect for the elderly.