‘She has no choice’: Liz Truss faces U-turn on energy if she enters No 10, MPs say
For months, everyone in government had known that Friday was energy cap day, and at 7am the bad news duly dropped. Phones pinged as the nation woke to Ofgem’s confirmation that typical gas and electricity bills were to rise by a frightening 80%.
Millions of people would be unable to cope, said charities. Even those on low or middle earnings who had some savings could see them entirely wiped out. It was a full-on national crisis, albeit long predicted.
Consumer champion Martin Lewis tore around central London giving breathless interview after breathless interview, starting on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 7.30am. Lewis appeared on 11 separate outlets before 2pm, raging at government failure to act on his warnings, first issued back in March.
But while Lewis was everywhere, and Labour’s shadow ministers piled in unopposed, the government was nowhere. Where, news producers asked, was the energy minister Greg Hands? Or indeed any other minister of the crown? Prime minister Boris Johnson, back from his second summer holiday, or the chancellor for another week at least, Nadhim Zahawi?
Hours earlier Hands, whose responsibilities include energy retail markets, had tweeted that it was “great to visit Los Alamos National Laboratory, here in New Mexico,” where he had been holding “useful discussions” on nuclear fusion.
When asked, mid-morning, if Hands was back at his desk, officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy seemed at first not to know. Then they said he was travelling to Indonesia for a G20 meeting. This despite the fact that he had been spotted late morning in his department office between flights, clearly with no time at all to entertain any media bids.
With the government absent, the Joseph
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