DAN HODGES: ‘Pensioners will die freezing and alone’, a minister confided to me in regards to the winter gas axe. And extra Labour MPs inform me they concern worse is to come back

It will begin with an unanswered knock on the door. Or perhaps a phone that simply rings and rings. There might be other clues. Some unretrieved post jutting out of the letterbox. Faded curtains that neighbours will recall haven’t been opened for days. And it will be cold. Very, very cold.

‘It’s only a matter of time until we get some terrible case,’ a minister confided to me. ‘It happens every year, some tragedy where a pensioner dies alone. But this year it will be blamed on us – for winter fuel allowance cuts. And then we’re going to be in the midst of a full-blown crisis.’

In recent weeks, it hasn’t been dominating the news agenda. Or even the political agenda. The farmers. Soaring immigration. HaighGate. These are the issues that have been grabbing the headlines and air-time.

But among the Cabinet, Labour MPs and party activists, there is a growing belief the decision to unexpectedly axe pensioners’ £300 winter fuel allowance has become a ticking timebomb under Sir Keir Starmer’s fledgling premiership. And they fear it’s about to explode.

‘It’s not simply another mistake,’ another minister warned. ‘This isn’t like the freebies or the P&O row [referring to colleagues accepting gifts from Lord Alli and the Transport Secretary urging people to boycott the ferry firm just before a £1 billion investment announcement].

‘If you speak to anyone in the party about the biggest reason we’ve lost our way, it’s winter fuel. We’re all getting flak – on the doorsteps, in our inboxes, even at the constituency surgeries. It’s cut through more than any other issue.’

This anxiety is being exacerbated by a lack of comprehension at precisely what Starmer and Rachel Reeves are seeking to achieve with the policy.

There is a broad realisation that while overhyped, the ‘black hole’ the Chancellor says she inherited from the Tory government is real. There’s also an understanding there is no scope for additional tax rises, and that cash needs to be found for sacred cows such as the NHS and education.

The anxiety is being exacerbated by a lack of comprehension at precisely what Starmer and Rachel Reeves, pictured on a train to Leeds yesterday, are seeking to achieve with the policy

But they cannot align the relatively small saving with the potentially catastrophic political cost of being seen to target some of the most vulnerable in society in wintertime.

One MP told me: ‘Our own analysis shows 100,000 pensioners could be driven into poverty by this. Yet the saving is tiny – just over £1 billion. In the scheme of things, that’s peanuts. Rachel’s supposed to be a smart economist and politician. But where’s the cost-benefit analysis? For the hit we’re going to take politically, it’s bonkers.’

The saving may not even be £1 billion. Ironically, the publicity surrounding the cut has encouraged a surge in applications for pensions credit from those who remain eligible. And, as a result, some estimates put the net saving to the Treasury as low as £500 million – a drop in the ocean of the £22 billion deficit supposedly left to Reeves by her predecessors.

Other ministers believe the policy may just be about defensible. But the way it has been handled has raised serious doubts about whether Downing Street and the Treasury are astute enough in communications terms to successfully plough through the potential storm.

‘Look at the way it was trailed,’ one minister complained. ‘It was left hanging there on its own. It wasn’t bundled up with other positive measures in the Budget. Basically, we put up a big sign saying, “Come and kick us over this”. And people have done.’

The view within No 10 and No 11 is that while the winter fuel allowance row will prove painful, it is ultimately manageable. They concede it is unpopular with focus groups, but claim when the policy is presented in the wider context of tough spending choices, a need to protect wider public service spending and the toxic legacy

of the Tory years, there is a grudging acceptance.

‘People don’t like it. But they understand it,’ one Labour official claimed to me.

HaighGate, in which Transport Minister Louise Haigh quit after a fraud offence was revealed, is among issues that have been grabbing the headlines and air-time

But this is just wishful – and many Labour MPs would say delusional – thinking.

So far, the Government has been riding its luck on winter fuel. The weather has been unseasonally mild. For some inexplicable reason, Kemi Badenoch has chosen not to push hard on the issue.

The furious reaction over other Budget issues, from Jeremy Clarkson, James Dyson and big business, has drowned out the plaintive cry from pensioners.

But soon Starmer’s luck will run out. And when it does, the backlash will make him long for the days he was fielding brickbats about Lord Alli’s flat.

That’s because the Prime Minister’s flagship policy is utterly indefensible. Literally.

If it was a case of simply facing down his political opponents, that would be one thing. His Commons majority of 174 would enable him to blindly steamroll his cuts through.

But it is not just his external enemies who oppose him.

I’ve spoken to Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, MPs, councillors, party officials, activists, trade union officials. I have yet to find a single person within Labour’s ranks who genuinely believes in the winter fuel benefit cut. Or thinks it is politically sustainable. ‘For the first time I’ve felt unable to walk round my own constituency’ a minister told me. ‘And it’s not just because of the reaction from my constituents. It’s because I feel totally ashamed.’

Speaking to people in Westminster about the winter fuel policy reminds me of the conversations I had over Liz Truss’s 45p tax cut. As debate raged over that similarly politically incontinent policy, I bumped into a Tory MP who I had just seen on television robustly defending the tax change.

‘Do you actually think you can ride this out?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he replied. ‘It’s lunacy! She’s going to have to drop it. It’s just a matter of when.’

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are going to have to ditch their winter fuel policy. The only question is whether they do it before, or after, the blizzard engulfs them. And, more importantly, before it engulfs the nation’s pensioners.

Last week Starmer delivered his much-vaunted relaunch. It was widely ridiculed as he

robotically trotted out a list of ‘measurable deliverables’ he claimed would be met by his ‘mission-led government’.

That ridicule is nothing compared to the visceral, white-hot fury that will be directed at him, when (not if) that first fateful knock on a pensioner’s door goes unanswered.