Labour has screwed up its whole energy price cap policy
Labour has made a fundamental error in its entire policy around the energy price cap. Just as Ofgem announced the cap is hitting over £3.5k a year, a fact-checking site also claimed that Labour wrongly costed its proposal to freeze bills at the level set at the April 2022 price cap. Yet Keir Starmer’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves still managed to go on morning TV and defend the party’s clusterfucking.
Unthinkable energy price cap increase
From October, the average energy bill will be £3,549 a year. This will be an increase of £2,272 since August last year – a staggering 178% rise in just 12 months. But things will get even worse. As iNews reported:
The cap will hit £5,386.71 in January before jumping to a mammoth £6,616.37 in April
That will mean a £5,339 rise since August 2021 – or a 418% increase. People are calling on the government and whoever the new PM will be to act. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said:
It is simply unthinkable that the price rises announced today can go ahead without further Government intervention on a significant scale.
Meanwhile, you’d think it would be simply unthinkable that Labour could mess its policy on this up. But no – “forensic” Starmer has managed to.
Labour: £8bn error
The party has said it would freeze prices at April energy price cap prices. That’s still a £694, or 54%, rise on August 2021 – hardly radical. But fact checker Full Fact has claimed that Labour has even got its maths wrong on this paltry offering. It says:
Read on...
Support us and go ad-freeLabour’s “fully funded” energy bills plan does not pledge enough money to cover a freeze in the price cap.
The party failed to take account of most customers’ higher gas and electricity consumption during the winter in its calculations.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says Labour’s figures are around £8bn out. So, a respected fact-checker and one of the country’s leading economic think tanks say Labour has got its energy price cap policy costings wrong. What does its shadow chancellor do? Claim they’re in the wrong.
Energy price cap = Tory class war
Reeves was on BBC Breakfast on 26 August. Host Naga Munchetty told her about Full Fact’s claims. The shadow chancellor’s response was:
Well, Full Fact, last time they fact-checked Labour analysis they had to withdraw their statement a couple of days later. So, I would take that with a pinch of salt.
Reeves may be referring to Full Fact having to make a correction to some figures in April. But, as Munchetty tried to ask her, what about the IFS? Reeves didn’t answer:
Rachel Reeves is told her figures are wrong and that Labour haven't taken into account increased use of energy in the winter. pic.twitter.com/f1voCi5UMo
— j (@jrc1921) August 26, 2022
The energy price cap is one of the most disastrous events for millions of families in recent years. Labour should be all over this and the Tory government’s pathetic response. Yet here the party is, making basic errors in its costings of a policy which still isn’t good enough anyway. Clearly, Starmer’s Labour won’t be coming to save us anytime soon. So, it’s down to trade unions, direct action and communities themselves to fight back against the Tories’ and corporations’ ongoing class war.
Featured image via Liarpoliticians – YouTube
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Oh the “joys” of being stuck once again with Thatcher Reagan’s flavour of Globalist Neoliberal One Party State!
They are not even bouncing from one “Western Empire” to the next, they just slay the entire West in one fowl swoop!
USA, CA, UK EU IL, AUS, NZ ALL the West the same crises!
6 Months is an Obvious Keyword, funny they knew how long the “Pandemic” was going on for, what will be next, I heard an announcement that ALL rain water, from here to the rainforests, is full of carcinogenics, and absolutely nothing else since, I’m sure something like that happened with Covid also. So is that the normalisation of the next cricis? All our water is toxic! Why don’t the just speed things up and blow us all up with a lovely little nuke party!
If Starmer had a smattering of socialism, he would see that privatisation does not work. Thatcher was wrong to sell our utilities to pay for a tax cut. The public, and especially the poor amongst us, are paying for CEOs to have massive wages plus bonuses, and shareholders to get exceptionally pleasant payouts.
Starmer needs to nationalise the energy companies. The rail and buses can come later.
We need to pay for energy…NOT CEO’s wages.
Have I done a Rip Van Winkle and been asleep long enough for a general election? Does it matter *what* Labour does or says? Labour aren’t in power. Are they?
Instead of slagging off the Labour Party why don’t you take the manly decision and join the fun loving SWP.
Surely this is the ideal time for The Greens to make hay.
Dirty gas and oil prices soaring. A nation wide drought scorching the earth.
Why aren’t they banging their drums for Universal Income and clean green energy?
We and Europe and North America are effectively at war with a psychopathic murderer who is using energy as a weopon. Labour has certainly been leading the argument better than the Tories that such abnormal energy price hikes cannot fall into households.
A radical rethink of long term energy security is needed but in the meantime we cannot leave the Ukrainian men, women and children unable to defend themselves against the barbarism of Putin and the billionaire oligarchs his regime props up.
You may be watching a tad too much MSM! We don’t get Electric from Russia, we sold Gas to Europe! If we were short on Gas, why sell it to Europe?
UK is reliant on only 4% of Russian Gas. How is Russia using energy as a wapon, when all sanctions on Russian Energy are entirely from the West, not Russia? I don’t care much for Putin, why would I or any Socialst!? He is a Conservative Party Leader, but this Russophobia from The Neo-Labour Party TORIES is deplorable!
From the horses mouth.
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9523/assets/6d8c8e5d-40fb-4940-859d-fd8357cd928f.png
Q: When is a cap not a cap?
A: When it’s called the energy price cap
Comment: It’s the western capitalist markets who decides on the price of energy. They can reduce it if they wanted to, but they choose not to. What has nuclear, wind, solar or hydro-electric power got to do with Ukraine or Russia?
Or indeed, how does 4% Gas, 9% Oil and 22% Coal imported from Russia manufacture an increases of gas by 91%, electricity by 70%!?
From: Commons Library
Imports of energy from Russia
Published Friday, 12 August, 2022
Also From: Commons Library
Domestic energy prices
Published Sunday, 28 August, 2022
“Higher wholesale prices, especially after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have led some to forecasts that the cap could increase by a further 50% in January 2023.”
And yet the Energy Companies keep announcing Record Profits of Billions, but shouldn’t they also be “struggling” on lower profits? Instead all these Manufactured Crises, of the Past 2 years? All we see is record profit after record profit at our expense, the Poor Die and the Middle-Class become the Poor!
Awww, C’est la Vie says I a Pauper!