Good morning. Today will be a difficult day for the Labour party, which is asking its MPs to vote this afternoon to means-test the winter fuel payment, but it is important to keep a sense of proportion, and a good indicator of that is the way lobby journalists are having to redefine the word “rebel”. In the Tory Brexit days, and before, a rebel was an MP voting against their government.
But today very, very few Labour MPs are expected to do that , and reporters on rebel count today will largely being trying to work out how many Labour MPs are deliberately abstaining. Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been doing a media round this morning defending the government’s decision. Speaking on Sky News this morning, he claimed the government had “no choice”.