Labour are spinning hard this morning over their newfound opposition to the scrapping of the pensions lifetime allowance cap. Now, their line is it’s a “gilded giveaway for the wealthy“, with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves doing the rounds to attack the move and announcing Labour will force a vote on it. On Peston last night she said:

“I think this could unravel as quickly as it began. If you remember last September Liz Truss tried to cut the top rate of tax from 45p to 40p, everybody kicked off about it. Next week there will be a vote on this, Labour will force a vote on this next week. I would say to Conservative MPs… Are you on the side of ordinary working people in your constituencies who are seeing their taxes go up or are you going to vote with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt for a tax cut for the wealthiest in society?”

These are also questions she might want to ask her frontbench colleague, the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting. In September, Streeting told the Telegraph in no uncertain terms that Labour would also abolish the “crazy” pensions cap if elected. Apparently it was the “hard headed and pragmatic” thing to do:

“I’m not pretending that doing away with the cap is a particularly progressive move […] But it is one that sees patients seen faster, and will inevitably save lives. I’m just being hard headed and pragmatic about this.” 

Now, six months later, his party is plotting to derail it as a political gambit– forcing a vote which, presumably by Wes’s own logic, would cost lives. Wes is insisting he meant Labour would scrap it only for doctors, although there’s no mention of that in the Telegraph interview. “Whose side are you on”…