‘Why do you hate pensioners?’ @loosewomen panellist Janet Street Porter asks the PM, saying ‘pensioners have come out worse under the Tories’@RishiSunak insists ‘I care deeply about pensioners’ pic.twitter.com/8xZBOreFXO

— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) May 16, 2024

Janet Street-Porter is probably right, if I were Rishi Sunak I would probably be sick of the sound of pensioners moaning away. Pensioners are less productive and expensive to maintain. The more the NHS helps them out , the greater their demands on the NHS.

They are an ongoing thorn in Government’s side complaining about rises in the state pension age, about blips in the application of the triple lock and forming themselves into action groups like WASPI and the BP Pensioner Group. What is worse, they seem to have time on their hands to make themselves heard and there is a house of Lords full of them, determined to filibuster Government legislation.

The truth is that if pensioners did not stand up for themselves, nobody else would.

Is it possible for both Rishi and Janet to be right? I’d say it was. Rishi may not like pensioners but he cares about them and in particular about their votes. They may not be the most co-operative, but they have the time on their hands to go to the ballot box and can swing things a Government’s way. This is sadly a problem because people of Rishi’s age don’t tend to vote so much, being busy bringing up families and working. People like Rishi are so much more productive. So Rishi can care about pensioners and hate them at the same time (and if I was him, I might well hold those contradictory emotions in my emotional wallet too),

Janet Street-Porter has made her career about articulating the thoughts of those like her. She can see through Rishi’s veneer of civility and knows that she is , and speaks for, a type of person who , were there a world enough and time, Rishi would put  on the first plane to Ruanda.

Into the fray steps Citywire’s Sam Bidwell

The fable of The Scorpion and The Frogtells the story of a scorpion who wants to cross a river, and so asks a frog to carry it across. The frog is hesitant at first, fearing that the scorpion will sting him – but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it did so. Yet, lo and behold, when the pair are midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, condemning them both. Despite its self-interest in keeping the frog alive, the scorpion cannot resist the temptation to sting – it is simply in his nature.

As I watched Loose Women’s Janet Street-Porter castigate a visibly uncomfortable Rishi Sunak for “hating pensioners” on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but wonder if the fable ought instead to be called The Pensioner and The Politician. Despite attempts by successive Governments to turn the UK into a retirement home with an aircraft carrier, many of Britain’s ageing baby boomers are still intent on bashing the Conservative Party. The ‘grey vote’ has benefitted handily from 14 years of Tory rule, and yet can’t resist an opportunity to grumble.

That’s despite April’s record-breaking 8.5 per cent increase to the state pension, which will see all pensioners get an additional £900 a year, regardless of wealth. Apropos of nothing, about a quarter of British pensioners are millionaires

A few points to make here.

Despite having a better state pension than we had fifteen years ago, it is still a relatively poor state pension compared to the state pension you get in other developed countries.  Even in America, home of the free-falling derelict, the OAP has a softer landing than in the UK.

The millionaires who are pensioners are the people who have generated the wealth that still makes Britain a good place to live, their enterprise and tax-paying is what means lads like Sam can look forward to a decent retirement themselves.

I was around in the 1980s and like Terry Pullinger, I chose a workstyle and a lifestyle that involved jam tomorrow, not hedonism today. Surprise, surprise, Terry Pullinger is now sitting on a big fat postman’s pension and I’m sitting on a big fat pension pot, which will become a pension as soon as possible. You can have envy for Boomers if you like Sam, but I think you’d be better off looking to your financial planning and working out how you can be a millionaire pensioner too.

Nobody cares about pensioners but pensioners, but the Scorpion and the Frog had better get along – if they are to get across the river. Simply cutting pensions, as we did when we gave up on DB pensions and tried to throttle the state pension is like the scorpion stinging the frog mid-stream. The frog and the scorpion may not understand each other, but they have a common interest. Janet and Rishi may hate each other – but care about each other they must!