Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
Energy bills rose dramatically for the second time this year on 1 October, deepening the fear in poorer households about how to make ends meet. Prices for everything keep rising while wages, benefits and pensions stagnate.
In advance of the rise, poverty charities and Martin Lewis the ‘money-saving expert’ had been frantically telling people to submit meter readings in time. There were electronic ‘queues’ on the utility companies’ websites.
The energy price cap means an average typical household is expected to pay £2,500 a year. In August 2021, the average bill was half that at £1,277. The Tories congratulate themselves for throwing billions of pounds at the greedy energy giants, maintaining their profits and still leaving households £1,200 a year worse off.
The goal is wide open for a party to put forward a bold energy policy to slash bills and make the energy giants pay. Polls have shown that even two-thirds of Tory voters support energy nationalisation.
But Labour leader Keir Starmer has ignored last year’s Labour Party conference decision to back nationalisation of the energy industry.
GB Energy
Instead, he told Labour’s conference a government led by him would create just one new nationalised energy company – ‘GB Energy’. But one patriotic-sounding public company competing in a private market will do nothing to help the millions facing fuel poverty. Unfortunately, this is the best we can expect from Starmer’s pro-capitalist Labour Party.
Energy must be nationalised entirely to bring our bills down and end fuel poverty, with no compensation to the existing fat-cat owners. A socialist energy system under democratic workers’ control and management, could properly invest in the energy sector to secure a cheap, reliable, green energy supply. We need a new mass working-class party that fights for that, and other socialist policies to end the cost-of-living crisis.
