Last week, the gap between the Labour leadership and its grassroots became glaringly apparent. It started on Tuesday when Cornwall Council debated the government's decision to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance. Councillors from across the political spectrum voted to defend Cornwall’s pensioners by asking the government to cancel the cut. The notable exception was Labour: Despite the obvious fact that thousands of their constituents will suffer, every Labour Councillor in the room voted to support the cut.

This vote was echoed by a motion the very next day at Labour’s national conference in Liverpool. Thousands of ordinary Labour Party members and Trade Union representatives voted for the Winter Fuel Allowance to be protected, whilst most Labour councillors and MPs voted to support the cut. This division between Labour’s grassroot supporters and its elected representatives reveals the party’s confused stance on the issue.

There are a brave few exceptions to this pattern. On September 10, when parliament voted on the Winter Fuel Allowance, around fifty Labour MPs abstained (despite knowing this will have consequences for their chances of promotion within the party). After the conference vote, one of them, Rosie Duffield (the MP for Canterbury) resigned from the Labour Party in protest at these heartless policies. Duffield’s resignation brings home the point that even within parliament, there is discontent about Labour’s failure to protect the most vulnerable. While some Labour MPs and councillors may be willing to toe the party line, others, like Duffield, are breaking ranks, calling out the leadership for failing to live up to the party’s core values.

This growing tension within the Labour Party makes it clear that the government’s approach to welfare is not only unpopular but unsustainable. The cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance were meant to save money, but as more people apply for Pension Credit, the supposed savings are disappearing. Somehow they have ended up cutting support for millions in the name of “filling the black hole”, and simultaneously failing to fill that very hole!

Short-sighted politicians frequently talk about “difficult choices” between supporting those in need and balancing the nation’s finances. But if we look beyond the immediate costs and benefits and consider the longer-term consequences, it becomes clear that these are often false choices.

If the government followed the Liberal Democrat policy of taxing the excess profits of the big oil and gas companies, there would be no need to change the Winter Fuel Allowance at all. If they invest in insulating our homes, we will all spend less on energy bills. If they invest in social care, fewer patients will be stuck in hospital. If they invest in public health and GPs, fewer people will need to go to hospital in the first place.

But if Labour’s leadership remains focused on short-term “fiscal rules”, they will drag the country into a downward spiral of austerity. Is that really the “change” that people voted for?