Morning Star Editorial: On pensions, Reform’s mask has slipped
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pensions-reforms-mask-has-slipped
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice at the count for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election at the South Lanarkshire Council headquarters in Hamilton, June 5, 2025MULTIMILLIONAIRE Reform UK MP Richard Tice’s attack on public-sector pensions exposes the party’s anti-working class character.
The claim that “gold-plated” pensions for public servants such as health and education workers are an impossible burden on the taxpayer is classic divide-and-rule propaganda.
Tice wants an end to defined benefit pension schemes, which provide a predictable income in retirement. But the scandal is not that these schemes still exist in the public sector but that they have been steadily withdrawn across the private sector.
Pensions are deferred wages and attacks on retirement income form part of the decades-long assault on working-class living standards, with wages accounting for a shrinking share of GDP since the 1970s while the share taken in profits and rents has risen.
Britain is not broke: rather we are living through what the Sunday Times Rich List has called a “golden age of the super rich.” British billionaires increased their wealth by £35 million every single day last year; banks and energy companies post record-breaking profits year on year.
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