When is a U-turn not a U-turn? When it can be spun as a wise and skilful concession to electoral reality by the politician whom many of Britain’s right-wing media outlets would like to see become prime minister – especially when it concerns an issue dear to the hearts of their predominantly elderly audiences.

Having previously insisted that Reform UK could not “guarantee anything” to pensioners, saying they would have “to see what the economics of this are like nearer the next election”, party leader Nigel Farage has now turned tail, saying, if elected, he would keep the triple lock for state pensions – and fund it with the “biggest cuts to the benefits bill ever seen in this country”.

The pensions triple-lock, originally proposed by the Liberal Democrats as a solution to pensioner poverty, has long since become political hallowed ground.

Introduced in 2010 as a flagship policy by George Osborne and David Cameron, who were understandably concerned to protect some of the Conservative Party’s core supporters from the impact of their austerity programme, it is something of a “third rail” – a policy no party with hopes of getting into government dare touch for fear of being punished by voters.

And not least by retirees who, unlike their younger counterparts, can be pretty much relied upon to actually cast their ballots on polling day.

Until now, Reform UK looked like it might be braver. In keeping with its much-trumpeted iconoclasm and its Doge-like enthusiasm for cutting “unsustainable” spending, it had refused to join the other parties in pledging to up-rate pensions annually by inflation or average earnings growth, or by at least 2.5 per cent, whichever is the greatest.

But that was when businessmen Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf were vying to become Farage’s finance guy. Now that they’ve been beaten to the post of “shadow-shadow chancellor” by Tory re-tread Robert Jenrick, things have changed.

To a professional politician like Jenrick, polls are always going to trump the public finances. It’s all very well promising to balance the budget by making savings – but public opinion inevitably determines where you’re going to look for them.

In a country where turnout varies so much according to age, and where, to be fair, even many younger and middle-aged people don’t want to see people all too easily portrayed as little old ladies and gents struggling to heat their homes and put food on the table, democracy is almost bound to shade into gerontocracy – rule, if not by, then at least on behalf of, senior citizens.

Never mind the terrifying forecasts that, given the seemingly inexorable decline in Britain’s birth rate and the associated rise in its dependency ratio, the costs of all that support are going to get harder and harder to afford.

Never mind, either, that recently, Farage and co have, in many other ways, been reverting to Thatcherite type. Among the most obvious barnacles that have been scraped off Reform’s boat is Farage’s pledge to part-nationalise the water industry. Presumably, his promise to nationalise the steel industry won’t be far behind either.

But the Iron Lady – very much along with Enoch Powell, one of Farage’s icons – was always a far cannier, less hopelessly ideological politician than many now recall. Until it deserted her toward the end of her third term, she had a keen sense of where the voters she needed most were, and she made damn sure never to cross them. With the odd, glaring exception (his cringeing attachment to Donald Trump, for instance – or his depressing admiration for Vladimir Putin, whom until recently he “admired“, before deciding he is a “very bad dude”), Reform’s leader is no different.

Whenever Keir Starmer has made the slightest course correction on policy, it has instantly been derided as a U-turn – a self-evidently damaging surrender either to his supposedly militant backbenchers. To his many supporters in the country and in the media, Farage is still flavour of the month. But if he keeps dramatically changing course, as with pensions, he risks “doing a Starmer” once too often to remain it.

Originally published at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel-farage-reform-triple-lock-pensions-uturn-starmer-b2950887.html