Keir Starmer's U-turn on Winter Fuel cuts is welcome but he owes us an apology

Last week was a week to forget for our country's embattled and increasingly desperate Conservatives forced him into a humiliating climbdown on his flagship . His u-turn is welcome but it something crucial was missing: an apology.

He owes an apology to the who suffered through last winter without money to turn on their heating; an apology to all those who ended up in hospital because they got cold - and the NHS staff who had to cope with the extra pressure; and an apology to his own MPs and Cabinet, who were sent out on the media and in Parliament to defend the indefensible. They did as they were told, only to be left hanging out to dry by their leader.

Labour Party research indicated that 3,000 pensioners would die as a result of this policy and they confessed it would reduce 100,000 pensioners to poverty. The Government's change of heart has given people hope that things will be better next winter, except there's a catch.

When Keir Starmer said he wanted more pensioners to get winter fuel payments in future, he didn't say who that would include - and who it would exclude. Nor whether the problem he created would be fixed this year, or will millions of pensioners be left in the cold again this winter.

Why no answers to these questions? If he knew, he would have told us. Instead, what this tells us is we have an incompetent Government and a Prime Minister without a plan.

He is making it up as he goes along. Take another thing that happened this week: the Prime Minister signed the UK up to perhaps the worst deal in history.

His Chagos surrender will see us pay for the privilege of renting something we owned on Friday morning with billions extra in reparations to boot. It will cost taxpayers £30 billion - enough to fund 150 million pensioners' winter fuel payments.

Quite apart from what that tells you about the choices this Government is making, it's a terrible deal. Just eight months ago Keir Starmer forced his MPs to show up and vote for the winter fuel payment cut.

Those MPs will have known how cruel that policy was but they sucked it up and did it for their boss. This week they learned their lesson. As he lurches from one mistake to another, let's hope the Prime Minister is learning too - and fast.