‘Rishi could run out of luck if he dares to ditch triple lock’

Increasingly, to be past retirement age is also to be blamed for all the troubles of the age – at fault apparently for everything from the housing shortage to NHS waiting lists. And never mind having completed a working life doggedly paying tax and national insurance into the pot in return for the promise of a state pension that will cover the basics – that is apparently to be thrown out of the window now the public finances are in a mess.New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to dump the ‘triple lock’ that applies to the uprating of the state pension, despite it having been a key promise in the manifesto that helped power the Conservatives to victory in the 2019 election.The so-called ‘grey vote’ is deeply unimpressed with Mr Sunak’s manoeuvring. Already thousands of you have swung behind this newspaper’s new campaign to protect the triple lock and no wonder: For all the propaganda about pensioners having it easier than younger generations, the truth is that the triple lock is hardly the sunlit uplands of luxury.It is merely a promise that each year the state pension will rise either in line with the cost of living, or in line with average wage rises, or at least by 2.5 per cent a year (the official target rate for inflation) – whichever of the three is higher. Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to dump the ‘triple lock’ (Image: GETTY)Sunak already shelved it for this year when he was Chancellor because average wages were bouncing back post-Covid and he argued that pensioners had been protected from the fall in incomes that workers had suffered during the pandemic.It was a highly contentious stance, but he largely got away with it on the basis that the lock would be restored in 2023. Now speculation is raging that the lock will soon be gone for good – perhaps as soon as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement on November 17. This would be an outrage. It is hardly the fault of pensioners that the Bank of England has failed to keep inflation within reasonable limits.Research has shown that prices of basic groceries are rising even faster than general prices, so even an uprating in line with September’s 10.1 per cent CPI measure of inflation will in reality constitute a living standards fall for many pensioners. In addition, those past retirement age are much less able than younger generations to take steps to increase their incomes because such steps typically involve working longer hours or getting promoted to a higher-paying job. Rishi Sunak speaks with patient Catherine Poole as he visits Croydon University hospital (Image: GETTY)Many pensioners also formulated their retirement plans based on the guarantee the Conservatives gave that the triple lock would be maintained. For the Government to pull the rug out from under that would be extremely shabby.Lots of people would have decided to stay on in their jobs for another few years had they been aware of the possibility of the state pension withering on the vine, but it is too late for them to do that now.It would be a great shame if Mr Sunak, who has begun his premiership so promisingly, were to allow himself to get side-tracked into waging a financial war on pensioners. To do so would not only constitute an indefensible show of bad faith, given the prior manifesto promise, but also amount to very bad politics indeed.The overall turn-out at the last general election was 67 per cent. But among those in the 65-74 age range it was over 75 per cent. Among the over-75s it was above 80 per cent. And these older voters were far more prone to voting Conservative than were younger age groups.According to the official British Election Study, the Tories had a vote share touching 60 per cent among pensioner cohorts, compared to a Labour share of below 25 per cent. ‘Older people were much more likely to vote Conservative and younger people were much more likely to vote Labour,’ the study bluntly concluded.There is no sign whatever of the Tories becoming popular among the young, who seem to be pouring out of formal education with their heads fuller than ever of Left-wing notions. But older voters are certainly likely to find Keir Starmer a less unpalatable prospect than was the ultra-Leftist Jeremy Corbyn.So while they might not wish to vote Labour, they very well might do if nursing justified feelings that the Tories had betrayed them.The only honourable way for Sunak to replace the triple lock would be if he gave pensioners at least two years’ notice and put it in his next election manifesto. But to do that he would first need to ask himself a question famously posed by Clint Eastwood in the movie Dirty Harry: ‘Do I feel lucky?