DAN HODGES: Starmer’s betrayal of Waspi girls is a nationwide shame on a par with Nick Clegg’s damaged promise on tuition charges

Angela Rayner prides herself on being a plain speaker. And her comments on Waspi women were characteristically direct. ‘The Government failed the women who were born in the 1950s,’ she passionately declared. ‘This is their money that they’ve had stolen off them and it’s completely unacceptable. And any government – any government – should act responsibly to these women.’

Any government, that is, except her own. Ms Rayner’s comments came in 2019, when she and her colleagues were bidding for power. But now they have it.

She has successfully procured her grace and favour flat in Admiralty House. And her chauffeur driven ministerial Range Rover. And her red folder elegantly embossed in gold with the King’s cypher.

So now those Waspi women, who were born in the 1950s and lost out when their pension age was increased from 60, can be safely cast aside. Though to be completely fair to Angela Rayner, it wasn’t her hand that slipped the blade so ruthlessly into the backs of the mothers and carers whom she had pledged to deliver from a great historic injustice.

She was blindsided just as much as her colleagues when the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall coldly announced to the House of Commons yesterday: ‘Given that the vast majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing, the Government do not believe that paying a flat rate to all women, at a cost of up to £10.5billion, would be a fair or proportionate use of taxpayers’ money.’

As one angry minister texted me: ‘We’ve got a whole new strategic communications team in No10. But there’s been no pitch-rolling and no political strategy around this announcement.’

That’s not entirely true. Keir Starmer did have a strategy of sorts – even if it was totally politically inept. It was to tell Waspi women when he was Leader of the Opposition ‘all your working life you’ve got in mind the date on which you can retire and get your pension, and just as you get towards it, the goalposts are moved and you don’t get it, and it’s a real injustice. We need to do something about it’. 

And then cynically betray them as soon as he became Prime Minister.

Now these Waspi women, who were born in the 1950s and lost out when their pension age was increased from 60, can be safely cast aside

Yesterday – as the Tory Party’s rusty attack machine finally creaked back into life, and began circulating images of Labour MPs pledging their support for the Waspi women’s cause – I asked one minister if we should expect to see a picture of him popping up promising to right this historic wrong. 

‘Yes,’ he told me despondently. ‘I gave the commitment. We all did.’ Another Labour MP told me: ‘We’re going to get slaughtered on this.’

They are. Rightly.

Because this is not just another of those broken promises that have come to define Keir Starmer’s first months in office. 

Up until now Labour have had a ready-made excuse. As each pledge has been torn up , they have pointed to the Tories, then at the purported ‘£22billion black-hole’ in the nation’s finances, and mouthed the same platitude. ‘Sorry. But we just didn’t know the full scale of the mess we were inheriting.’

But that’s not what happened yesterday. Liz Kendall didn’t plead poverty: she explicitly rejected their claim in principle.

She insisted that most women knew the state pension age was increasing. And the fact ministers hadn’t sent out letters to that effect at the time was insignificant, she added. Dismissing a Parliamentary Ombudsman report which recommended compensation to those women affected, Kendall was brutally clear. ‘These two facts — that most women knew the state pension age was increasing and that letters are not as significant as the ombudsman says — as well as other reasons, have informed our conclusion that there should be no scheme of financial compensation to 1950s-born women in response to the ombudsman’s report.’

There is indeed an argument that the Waspi women should have been aware of what was coming, and should have planned accordingly. But the problem is, that was not Liz Kendall’s argument. Or Keir Starmer’s. Or Angela Rayner’s. Or any of the hundreds of Labour MPs who happily posed with the Waspi women when the politics of the moment suited them, and said to their faces: ‘We agree with you. We agree your cause is just. Trust us. We are on your side.’

This is just another of those broken promises that have come to define Keir Starmer’s first months in office

So no, this is not just another broken Starmer promise. It is a national disgrace on a par with Nick Clegg’s broken promise on tuition fees, when he was in Coalition with the Tories. There is no ambiguity. There can be no sophistry, or political revisionism. The Prime Minister told Waspi women when he was elected he would end the injustice perpetrated towards them. And it was a polished, gleaming, gold-plated lie.

And remember what else Sir Keir promised when he was in Opposition – not just to the Waspi women, but to the whole nation?

Honesty. Integrity. Transparency. How many times did we see him puff out his chest, clamber onto his high horse, and decry the lies and dishonesty and perfidy of Boris Johnson and the Tories.

Actually, never mind in opposition. His piety and self-righteousness were carried with ease into Downing Street. ‘Politics is about choices,’ he declared just over a month ago. ‘My government chooses honest, responsible, long-term decisions in the interests of working people.’

Set aside the fact it is the King’s government – not Starmer’s. The choices the Government does make appear to have nothing to do with ‘honesty’. The decision to deny Waspi women compensation was instead founded on a callous deception.

There was nothing ‘responsible’ about the way Starmer and his colleagues repeatedly reassured them a way would be found to recompense them. And as for policy-making ‘in the interests of working people’, the Waspi women are the definition of working Britain: Cooks, cleaners, shop-workers., home builders.

We hear a lot from our political class about the dangerous disconnect between themselves and the people. About the rising tide of populism. The rejection of tried-and-tested models of governance.

Well this is where it comes from. The casual contempt that sees a prime minister – happy to dress himself and his wife in clothes paid for by a millionaire party donor – promise a neglected group of women that he would rectify a historic injustice they had faced, only to betray them once he’d secured their vote.

Waspi women represent Keir Starmer’s greatest breach of trust since he came to power. But it seems they are unlikely to be his last.