https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/p/keir-starmer-is-such-a-shit-liar
Keir Starmer's lies unravel upon the slightest contact with reality and often contradict what he's only just said days previously.
Another Angry Voice
Sep 14, 2024

Keir Starmer has said that he had to revoke the Winter Fuel Allowance from 10 million pensioners in order to save the NHS, which is an easily demonstrable lie.

No more money for the NHS

Just days prior to this claim Starmer stated that the NHS would get "no more money without reform" which blatantly contradicts his assertion that the £1.5 billion he’s confiscated from pensioners is to be invested in the NHS.

Either he’s blackmailing doctors into accepting privatisation reforms by saying the NHS will get no new money, or he’s investing the money saved from impoverishing pensioners into the NHS. It’s literally impossible for both things to be true.

No impact assessment

Keir Starmer openly admits that he didn’t bother to carry out an impact assessment on the removal of winter fuel payments, stating that there was no need because there’s no legal requirement to do so.

It’s not just a sickening attitude to claim that there was no need to even bother estimating the death toll of his policy because he’s not legally required to, it’s also obvious that any competently conceived impact assessment would have highlighted increased pressures on already overstretched NHS services arising from a policy of forcing pensioners to choose between heating and eating.

It’s quite something to cite a policy that will obviously cause increased strain on the NHS as being necessary to save the NHS.

What about the "black hole of debt"?

Starmer’s original excuse for punishing pensioners was that the Tories had left a £22 billion "black hole of debt". He never adequately explained why he went after the easy target of pensioners to balance the books, rather than increasing taxes on the already wealthy though.

Increasing taxes on the wealthy would have been a much more logical solution than withdrawing support from pensioners on as little as £11,000 per year, because then it would only have impacted the richest pensioners. However it would also have impacted the mega-rich donors who have been pumping massive political donations into the pockets of Starmer and his inner circle too, so he took the easy route of going after those with less power to fight back.

But we’re still left with the question of whether the claimed £1.5 million saving is intended to fill in the "black hole" or to provide extra NHS funding. It can’t be both.

A drop in the ocean

Even if all of the £1.5 billion that Starmer says he’s saving by punishing pensioners were to be put directly into the NHS, that would amount to less than 1% of the total NHS budget (£168.8 billion in 2023/24).

You’d have to be spectacularly naive to accept the premise that a below 1% increase in funding is sufficient to "save the NHS".

Is £1.5 billion even accurate?

The purpose of the Winter Fuel Allowance is to cover some of the pensioners’ energy bills so that they can afford to buy other things like food, a nice warm winter coat, or presents for the grandkids.

When pensioners spend money on other things like this, the money circulates around the economy causing increased economic activity, and therefore higher tax returns, as well as saving the country money by keeping more pensioners out of hospital during the high demand winter months.

Simply treating the policy as £1.5 billion saved without assessing the knock on consequences is exactly the same myopic short-term penny pinching mentality that cause 14 years of austerity stagnation under the Tories.

Whether this saving is being used to fund the NHS, as Starmer claims, or it’s being used to cut government borrowing, as Starmer claims, it’s also worth asking if the saving does actually amount to £1.5 billion, or whether this figure has been calculated in a misleading way by excluding the positive returns.

Conclusion

Keir Starmer is exceedingly bad at lying. Not only do his claims dissolve upon contact with reality, they also blatantly contradict his previous statements on the same subject.

It’s a crying shame that nobody in corporate media or the BBC seems willing to hold him to account on his lies and contradictions, because we all know that when inveterate liars are challenged on their deceptions, they always dig themselves even deeper into their pit of lies, rather than coming clean and admitting their dishonesty.

Britain’s media class could easily hold Starmer’s feet to the fire over his deceptive excuses, but for some reason they’re choosing not to.