It’s almost as if on 5 July Labour strategists had sat down and discussed with each other how they could offend the largest number of people in the shortest possible time.
First, it was the nine million pensioners who will be losing their winter fuel allowance, worth up to £300. This week, it’s the millions of bus users who will see their bus fares rise by a whopping 50 per cent. In a speech on Monday, the Prime Minister announced the bus fare price cap of £2 would increase to £3.
Is it any wonder that Keir Starmer’s approval ratings have gone from +11 per cent on 5 July to a truly terrible -38 per cent this week? It’s the quickest and biggest drop in popularity of any prime minister in recent history. That is quite an achievement when you think about it, given the reservoir of goodwill there was on 5 July towards the new Government.
Before Covid hit, there were 4.1 billion bus journeys in the UK. That figure dropped to 1.57 billion in 2021, and although bus travel recovered to 3.4 billion journeys in 2023, it’s still below pre-Covid levels. The Conservatives introduced the £2 fare cap as a way of revitalising bus travel after Covid. It’s clear that Labour’s 50 per cent increase in the fare cap will mean that bus travel is unlikely to expand in 2025. And we shouldn’t forget that they won’t guarantee fares won’t increase again this time next year.
If you’re part of the gig economy, on a zero-hours contract, or on minimum wage, your weekly bus fare increasing from £20 to £30 per week is a significant rise. It could be even more than that in some circumstances. OK, a bus fare rise is not a tax rise, but it is an increase in the cost of living for the much vaunted “working people” – the very people that Labour promised to make better off.
In 2022 Rishi Sunak cut fuel duty by 5p to help aid the post-Covid recovery. Fuel prices are now up to 20p per litre lower than they were in 2020. Adding 1p to fuel duty would raise more than double what putting up the bus fare cap has done.
It’s very possible that the 5p cut will not only be reversed in the Budget, but a further 2p could be added on top of that, raising an additional £6bn. This will be received with outrage from the haulage industry, and also from people in rural areas, where car ownership is a necessity, not a luxury. So in many ways the rural economy is going to be hit by another Labour double whammy. They’re going to make both car and bus travel in rural areas less affordable. Way to go.
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Claims this bus fare rise won’t affect pensioners are wrong. Pensioners do indeed get free bus travel, but only after 9am. There are plenty of just-about-managing pensioners who have part-time jobs, especially in the retail sector. So their travel costs will rise too, with no commensurate recompense in their wages.
Even an economic ignoramus understands that endless borrowing has, at some stage, to be curtailed. All governments have a duty to balance the books in the long term. But this Government appears to have made a conscious decision to put more of a burden on pensioners by the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance, and now to add to the woes of the low paid by increasing their travel costs. To govern is to choose, and it is difficult to understand why Labour have made these tin-eared choices. Politically, they may well come to regret them.
I was talking to an ex-Conservative cabinet minister at the weekend who told me that civil servants in their old department had told them that the new secretary of state barely questions any paper that are put in front of them and just signs off Civil Service recommendations. Civil servants are not paid to consider the political consequences of their recommendations. That’s the job of ministers. And Labour ministers seem utterly incapable of understanding both the human and political consequences of their decisions. Voters are starting to see through their utter incompetence.
