So now we know who’s the mastermind behind Andy Burnham’s assault on the state pension triple lock. And I’m not surprised at all.
The PM’s decision to slam his studs into the triple lock was a bold move. It risks alienating millions of pensioners, who will now be even less likely to vote Labour at the next election than they already were. I genuinely didn’t think nice guy Andy Burnham had it in him. Or any major political leader, for that matter.
It’s a divisive move, given how the triple lock has lifted millions of pensioners out of poverty. Many will take their revenge at the polling booth, which is why Westminster has dodged this one for years. So which crackpot persuaded Burnham to put the boot in? His name is Torsten Bell, and I’ve warned you about him before.
Bell is one of those fresh-faced ambitious types who spend their lives hovering around think tanks, dreaming up abstract policies to inflict on people living in the real world. For a decade, he was head of left-wing policy factory the Resolution Foundation, pumping out paper after paper that mostly said the same thing: we need to tax people more. Especially older people. And now he’s a Labour high-flier, and finally able to put his madcap theories into practice.
It’s a natural step from a well-funded think tank to the Westminster bubble, and Bell hasn’t hung around. He was parachuted into a Labour seat at the last election and quickly appointed pensions minister. Given the dismal lack of talent on Labour’s over-stuffed back benches, this bushy-tailed careerist was a shoo-in.
He was even drafted in to write Rachel Reeves’s second Budget, but took none of the flak for the ensuing shambles. Reeves is gone, Bell is showing every sign of sticking around. Possibly for much longer than the triple lock.
Bell has been hovering around Labour circles for years, waiting for his moment. He worked as an adviser to Alistair Darling, then chancellor, during the financial crisis and served as Labour’s director of policy when Ed Miliband was party leader.
In fact, the infamous ‘Ed Stone’ engraved with election pledges was his idea. It became one of the most mocked symbols of Miliband’s disastrous 2015 election campaign. But once again, Bell floated on unscathed.
Bell is full of beans. He’s bright and bouncy and talks over everyone. He’s also famously potty-mouthed, swearing merrily away in front of shocked colleagues, even senior ones who’d rather he didn’t. But forget the four-letter words. It’s his three-letter obsession that should scandalise you: tax.
I can’t Torsten Bell understands what it’s like to be a struggling pensioner (Image: Getty)
Last year, I ran through a list of all the taxes Bell wanted to increase and, incredibly, it came to 20. The vast majority would have hammered pensioners. They included capping ISAs, scrapping inheritance tax nil-rate bands, hiking council tax, charging capital gains tax on our homes and slapping an exit tax on any beaten-down taxpayer who tried to flee these shores. The list is here if you can stand to read it. Reeves has already introduced a string of them.
Bell is so excited by all the taxes he could hike, he never considers the consequences, such as deterring people from working and building wealth in the first place.
His big dream is to scrap the state pension triple lock, which he’s slammed as a “silly system” and a “rubbish” mechanism. Now he may get his way. If Burnham follows through, millions of pensioners can thank Bell for making their retirement even more of a struggle.
Burnham has to get this through an election. The danger, from the PM’s point of view, is that it sinks him. As Reeves and Miliband learned to their cost, senior politicians need to tread carefully around Torsten Bell. He has a habit of torpedoing their ambitions, while achieving his own. He’s now doing his best to sink your ambition of a comfortable retirement, and might get his way again. Like I said, watch out for him. Andy Burnham should tread warily too.