James Collett, South West Socialist Party
Energy costs are about to rise by 13%. The new cap for a typical household will rise to £1,862 annually.
Due to the economic hit of Trump’s war on Iran, the government’s
regulator Ofgem is raising the energy price cap next month.
Already we are feeling the pain of inflation at the petrol pumps and the supermarkets – and this hike will make all that worse.
Can we afford it? No. The poorest fifth of the population earn £232 a week and spend £378 a week already – the shortfall covered mainly by credit cards. Two million people are already in debt to gas and electricity companies, a combined total of £4.5 billion. When was the last time your wages went up by anywhere near the prices of essentials?
It’s alright for some. Oil giant Shell reported a rise in first-quarter profits to $6.9 billion and TotalEnergies’ profits jumped by almost a third in the same period.
The big banks are also flourishing. The ‘Big Six’ US banks made nearly $50 billion of profit in the first three months of the year, while we worried about the devastation and knock-on effects of brutal wars.
Labour’s energy secretary Ed Miliband commented: “The rise in the price cap because of a war we did not choose is deeply unwelcome for households across the country”. Yeah, no shit! And what are you going to do about it?
Profits rising for the billionaires while bills go up for working-class people is not a coincidence: it’s robbery on a systemic scale. While our wages stay the same, prices go up to protect the profits of a tiny few. And the Labour Party defends the interests of those big bosses. No wonder Keir Starmer’s Labour is so hated.
This Labour government is limping along, a trade union-led fight could win concessions from the bosses and their government. We should demand price controls, hardship funds, free public transport and more – paid for by utilising the wealth hoarded by the big bosses.
We need our own party, a working-class party that takes the fight to the super-rich. We need to nationalise the energy companies, water companies and banks, with no compensation for the fat cats. Fight Starmer’s government of the rich, fight for socialism!
