Can Labour’s fuel allowance U-turn repair the political damage?

About time, too. It is mystifying that it has taken this long to reach this point, and it is worrying that there is no guarantee that the payment will be reinstated for needy people in time for this winter.

But it is welcome.

Labour was right to look at the allowance. It was wrong that a multi-millionaire should get the same payment as a pensioner in poverty. Or indeed any payment.

It was also wrong that well-to-do pensioners gifted their allowance to a charity of their choice – great for them doing so, but any spare taxpayers’ cash should be going into health and education.

Although the threshold at which people qualify for the allowance will probably be moved, from £11,500-a-year up towards those who get £20,000, can the monetary U-turn undo the damage?

The abolition was a totemic move by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, introduced to show how tough she was and to forcefully illustrate how big the black hole was that the Tories had left. Yet the savings were going to be small, particularly if needy pensioners waded through forms and claimed the tax credits they were due, and it looked mean – picking on pensioners to avoid raising taxes on the wealthy.

It became part of Labour’s early narrative that Britain was miserable and broken – a storyline so unappealing that voters have turned to Nigel Farage for hope.

The U-turn will give a few quid to some needy people and so will help pay some bills, but Labour has spent a lot of political capital on this. If the forthcoming benefit reforms also leave the worse off worse off, this U-turn will not have remedied anything.