Policy announcement: Keir Starmer will unveil a plan to help electricity and gas customers weather the worst effects of forthcoming huge price increases – but will it be any good?

Labour is to announce its plan to save UK citizens from the poverty threatened by energy price increases in what Diane Abbott has described as a “long speech” by Keir Starmer on Monday (August 15).

From the BBC’s report, it seems the plan is to freeze the energy price cap at its current level, meaning the highest amount customers can be charged per year will remain at £1,971 per year.

Apparently “the oil and gas producers making huge profits” would be taxed, presumably to cover the shortfall this would create in payments, as the cost of the energy would continue to rise even though the amount we pay for it would not.

I have a question about that: if we don’t pay these firms the amount they’re demanding, they won’t accrue “huge profits” and may not be able to pay.

So, is Labour’s thinking on this entirely clear?

Of course, we won’t know for sure until we hear all the details from Starmer.

One thing that he won’t be endorsing, it seems, is Gordon Brown’s call for the energy firms to be re-nationalised.

This Writer cannot understand why Labour would not support this.

It is what the UK government did with the banks when the financial crisis of 2008 onwards hit them, and it worked very well, saving many people’s… well… savings.

And it would allow the government to cushion the effect of any further price rises with public funds, recouping the loss over a period of time (of whatever length necessary) afterwards.

It would also correspond with the actions of the French government, which has forced energy firm EDF to restrict the amount it charges customers there to around half of what it charges customers in the UK, before being fully nationalised.

It is impossible to justify customers of the same firm being charged such massively different prices, depending on where they live – or so it seems to me.

Given this information, it seems hard to believe that Starmer – let alone the lame-duck Tories who are only tinkering around the edges of the problem – have our best interests at heart.

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