This is Armchair Economics with Hamish McRae, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

This is Armchair Economics with Hamish McRae, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

The drumbeat of calls for an end to the triple lock on pensions grows louder by the day. The British Chambers of Commerce has recently joined the OECD, the Tony Blair Institute, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for a Better Britain and many more in calling for the Government to abolish the link between the state pension and whichever is the highest of three markers: average earnings, inflation and 2.5 per cent.

It’s true that most mainstream politicians, doubtless mindful that there are 13.2 million people getting the state pension, say they will keep it. But Labour has committed to do so only for this Parliament, and if Andy Burnham goes for an early election, this may not be very long. The official Conservative line is that the party will keep the policy, but several senior Tories, including Sir Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat, have spoken out against it. And while Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is solidly in favour of it, Sir Vince Cable, a minister in the coalition government that introduced the policy in 2011, called for it to end at a fringe event at the Lib Dem conference this week.

So, the debate has become polarised between the economists and former politicians on the one side, and the current politicians on the other. Given that public finances are under huge pressure – we’ll learn more about that in the Budget, now only........

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