Britain is sliding towards an energy precipice. So where are its leaders?
It is a measure of Britain’s political vacuum that radical solutions to the energy crunch are being provided not by the prime minister but by Gordon Brown – someone who left Downing Street more than 12 years ago.
No question, the country is being failed by its current leaders. Boris Johnson turned up to a meeting with electricity companies organised by the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, and the energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, but it was really just a PR exercise intended to show the government is doing something while the clock runs down.
There were no new substantive proposals, merely a joint pledge by government and industry to work together to ensure the public would be protected as “unprecedented” global events drove prices higher. There was a vague hint from the chancellor about a tougher windfall tax but the real message was: “We can do nothing but feel your pain.”
Johnson made that abundantly clear when he said any fiscal decisions would be left to the next prime minister when they take over at the beginning of September. It is up to Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss to say how much support they will provide and how they will pay for it, something they have so far failed to do.
In an article for the Guardian, Brown says the lessons he learned from being at the helm during the 2008 global financial crisis were the importance of being ahead of events rather than behind the curve, and to get to the root of the problem. Judging by the way the government is blundering into a crisis, neither lesson has been learned.
That’s not to say the parallels with 2008 are exact. Back then, the solution was to nationalise or part-nationalise failing banks, pump state capital into them, then allow them to carry on functioning as before.
The energy
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