Tories in perilous position after Andy Burnham's decision to scrap pension triple lock – Adam Morris
As Conservatives gather for their party conference, Adam Morris warns they could find themselves bystanders in a debate about pensions between Labour and Reform
When your fiercest political opponent rises to give a keynote speech, you can expect many things. Poised with pen in hand, you await ideas you can criticise, assertions you disagree with, and hopefully a gaffe or two along the way.
What you don’t expect is to be wrongfooted a week before your own main event. But with his pledge to end the so-called triple lock on pensions, that is exactly what Andy Burnham has done to the Conservatives.
As they begin their conference today in Birmingham, they urgently need to think up a compelling response. The Prime Minister shocked the political bubble by going where none of his predecessors dared. He not only resolved to end the policy, but to go out and passionately argue why.
It wasn’t a trick buried in the footnotes of a policy paper – this will be a bold commitment upon which he will base his campaign for the 2029 general election. It leaves the Conservatives in a perilous position.
READ MORE: Andy Burnham's triple-lock pension gamble risks repeat of Keir Starmer's first big mistake
The election’s most defining issue
Privately, Tories know the triple lock – which ties increases in pension payments to three measures and always delivers on the most generous – is unsustainable. They also know the public increasingly agree. Nothing else is triple-locked, after all.
But here is the problem: the opposition is supposed to oppose. They know the worth of the over-65 voting population, and they know simply pledging not to end the practice will secure some easy backing.
And there’s another problem: Reform will promise to retain the triple-lock, and argue to do so with all the aggressive rhetoric that Labour will use against it. The Conservatives risk becoming bystanders in the next election’s most defining topic.
Damned if they back Labour, as it would hand Reform the stage for keeping the arrangement. Damned if they don’t, knowing other savings would need to be found, and that the tide is turning on the policy’s worth.
So they need to find a third way. A solution, but more importantly, a way of communicating it with the same verve as Burnham. The Labour leader is a master communicator; during his conference speech I found myself thumbing the desk with glee even when I disagreed with him.
Drop the snark
But Kemi Badenoch is a great communicator too. So how do the Tories use that to ride through the middle? A serious tone should be adopted, including an abandoning of social media snark. They should drop the lingo of ‘triple lock’, a phrase few people understand anyway.
It’s about presentation as much as anything else. Even if the ultimate outcome is the same, they should consider announcing an end to all three locks, to be replaced by a comprehensive new deal for pensioners, which could be tied to other tricky issues like winter fuel payments and other OAP perks.
The strategy will need burnished over time, but they could even weave it into a wider benefits reform, revisiting some of the austerity language that served David Cameron and George Osborne well ahead of the 2010 general election.
The whole thing would need a rebrand, but it would at least take the messaging out of Labour’s hands. Burnham has drawn the battle lines. The Conservatives must use this week’s conference to rally the troops in response.
Adam Morris is a former director of communications for the Scottish Conservatives
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