Max McGee, Nuneaton Socialist Party
Keir Starmer has said ‘there is a deep rot in the heart of British institutions’. I assumed he meant the Labour Party and the fact that its MPs have declared tens of thousands of pounds of donations from energy companies since the election, the government subsequently hiking households’ energy bills by £149 a year on average.
As recently as 2023, Labour pledged an immediate freeze on prices. That’s changed now they are in office getting their MP’s salary of £91,000 plus travel, living, eating, heating and office costs covered, with cabinet ministers earning £158,000, also with cushy expenses.
MPs should take the average wage of a skilled worker, like Militant MP, now Socialist Party National Committee member, Dave Nellist did in the 1980s. We need a workers’ MP on a workers’ wage, not fat cats in suits who laugh in our faces every time they go to the bank at our expense.
To add insult to injury, last year the eye-watering bonuses of the ‘big six’ energy bosses totalled enough to power 23,000 homes for an entire year! By cutting CEO’s pay, companies like Shell and Paypoint could save money, they could also spend less paying for the breaking and entering of 4,000 homes to install prepayment meters.
And when they’re found to have broken so-called market rules on competition set by ineffectual government regulator Ofgem, they are told to donate a few million quid to Ofgem’s ‘voluntary redress fund’.
Labour has planned tiny tweaks to the windfall tax on oil and gas profits, increasing it to 75% to 78%, extending it until 2030 and removing some tax breaks. Bosses of 42 fossil fuel companies have written an open letter threatening to pull £200 billion of investment, including into green energy.
While a small number of super-rich capitalists keep their hands on the industry, they will continue to profit at our expense while destroying the environment. You can’t regulate what you don’t own. We need nationalisation not devastation, take over the huge energy companies under workers’ democratic control, with no compensation for the polluting fat-cats, only where there is proven need.
