Labour’s pension raid will damage Britain’s economy

Reintroducing the lifetime allowance would see swingeing tax rises for some, but the public sector could be unfairly protected

Sir Keir Starmer is not used to playing by the same pension rules as everyone else. As this newspaper first reported, the Labour leader benefits from the unique “Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC” law, providing special tax advantages to the savings he accumulated while director of public prosecutions. 
Sir Keir has promised to scrap this law if elected, but does this history explain why he apparently feels no sense of moral queasiness at the idea of exempting public sector workers from his planned raid on pensions? 
Reintroducing the lifetime allowance would see swingeing taxes levied upon pension withdrawals above roughly £1 million. This would be damaging enough, by discouraging saving, and would be particularly devastating for those who acted on the abolition of the allowance and started paying more into their pots. But it is made worse by the possibility that it would not apply fairly across the board.
Labour is thought to be considering exempting some public sector workers from the cap to avoid losing them to early retirement. The fact that many companies would like to avoid losing their top workers, who generate the wealth that pays for the public sector, has apparently been ignored. 
Sir Keir seems to know perfectly well what his constituency is, and is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the pain he inflicts on the rest of the economy does not fall upon Labour-supporting vested interests. His party, meanwhile, appears to be embracing the worst of its Corbynite heritage – and it plans for pensioners to foot the bill.