'Excuse me!' Moment furious GB News row erupts over WASPI women

GB News erupted into a furious row over WASPI women pensions as Dr Lisa McKenzie and Andy Twelves clashed live on-air.

Reform MP Lee Anderson was quizzing the pair in a festive segment which suddenly turned awkward as Andy fumed: “How do you not financially plan for your retirement?” – and Lisa was left fuming.

Starting the debate in defence of the Labour Party, Andy said; “It’s one of those things. It’s easy in the opposition to give support to any cause that does seem fairly legitimate, and I think it is, the WASPI women probably should have been better informed and better treated. But realistically you can’t just throw about £10million.”

Referring to Labour’s decision to first support and then withdraw that support for WASPI women, Anderson interjected: “Is this another reason why people don’t trust politicians? They promise one thing and do another.”

Andy tried to explain: “I don’t think they ever promised to pay them out, I think-“ but Lisa cut him off to say: “Hang on, hang on. Angela Rayner going on the news and saying this is disgusting we need justice for these women, if that’s not a promise then what is it?”

And Lee wasn’t having any of it as he encouraged: “Come on Andy, try and show some more enthusiasm in your defence.”

Which is when Andy dropped the bombshell: “I struggle with this debate because I see both sides of it, because yeah they were probably mistreated and should have been informed better, but then also how do you not financially plan your retirement? I look at it from both sides.”

A furious Lisa chimed in: “Excuse me?! Hang on, hang on, I’ve got to stop you here. ‘How do you not plan your retirement?’ Do you know anything what happens to working class women?

“What we do is we start work at 16, we have a family, we usually stop working for a bit to bring up our families and then we go back to work again. We usually then have to start paying extra into our NI savings because we’ve missed a bit out if we want to get a pension. Then at the other end of our lives we end up caring for our older family members as well.

“So saying prepare for it… women earn less than men still, imagine in the 50s and 60s that massive gap between men and women’s earnings. Then on top of that we’ve now got a situation where they thought they were retiring at 60, now it’s 65, for the rest it’s 67.

“Surely that should be an issue we all coalesce around and say 67 for some workers is too old. Therefore we should be supporting any elderly benefits whether it’s winter fuel or the WASPI women.”

Lee insisted: “They’re picking on the pensioners, the Labour Party,” but Andy said, dejected: “I don’t think… You could say that about any government, you can link any two decisions together. It’s a silly piece of rhetoric.”