Stephen Pollard

accepting the recommendations of the report. Only someone who hadn’t looked at the report could describe the announcement as astonishing.

Even given the low calibre of Labour’s frontbench it is hard to believe that Ms Abrahams was unaware of Mr Cridland’s proposals. So one has to conclude that Ms Abrahams was feigning astonishment for political effect.

Even that attempt to play politics with pensions isn’t the worst of it because the real issue is Labour’s attitude to dealing with the issue itself.

The truth is that we are living longer and the existing sums do not add up. But instead of grappling with such difficult decisions Labour’s response is to attack the Tories and pretend there is no difficult choice to be made.

Labour’s position is to pretend that nothing has changed and that we can carry on exactly as before. Yet the evidence is clear.

The fact we are living longer and the way pensions are funded from money paid in taxes by the working population means that the original plan was simply unaffordable.

As Mr Gauke put it: “As life expectancy continues to rise and the number of people in receipt of state pension increases we need to ensure

IT IS difficult to know where to start with such obvious nonsense. The trend has been clear for more than a century: life expectancy has gone up and up.

In 1948 the average 65-yearold could expect to live another 13.5 years. Now that figure is 22.8 years. This is a good thing, surely, but it has consequences, one of which is that the pension bill is growing.

Since money isn’t limitless, today’s children and those yet to be born would have to pay ever higher taxes to afford the pension bill if existing plans had not changed.

Any sensible government would take action to avoid a huge tax bill for our descendants which would quickly become unsustainable. That is what is now happening based on an independent outside report using the work of actuaries and experts.

Ms Abrahams instead suggests that because there has recently been a small and exceptional hiccup in that rate of growth in life expectancy, the Government should do nothing. The reason of course is so that she can attack the Tories, even blaming this change on “austerity”.

This is both shameless.

Labour is ahead in the polls and has realistic hopes of forming the next government. But as this episode shows the Corbynite hard-Left, which now controls the party, is incapable of treating voters like adults and engaging in serious political debate.

Don’t say we warned. pathetic haven’t and

‘Cannot engage in serious debate’

been