France has public ownership of energy. Why can’t the UK have that too?
The problem: energy prices are set to have quadrupled within a year and the Tory government is doing nothing about it.
Controversial as he may be in many respects, Owen Jones makes a lot of good points in this short clip from an appearance on Jeremy Vine’s show.
Firstly, because the energy firms are private companies, their shareholders have received £200 billion in dividends since 2010 – money that could have been used to reduce bills instead, or to free the UK from dependence on fossil fuels provided by foreign suppliers (this would have eliminated the price shock that has sent our bills skyrocketing today).
We’ve been told profits have increased fourfold because of the price increases – and very little of that is likely to go into energy independence; 60 per cent of these new profits will go to shareholders.
The energy industry is a natural monopoly which should never have been privatised. The solution to the price problem is to re-nationalise the industry and impose stern pricing controls on bills sent to the public. Windfall taxes on the companies are not enough.
See/hear for yourself:
Sadly, nobody in any position to affect the energy crisis is even thinking of re-nationalisation, despite the example of France, where price increases are pinned at an affordable four per cent.
Even Labour leader Keir Starmer thinks the energy firms should remain in the hands of billionaires – a position that sets him against the vast majority of his party’s members.
But then, who cares about that? Starmer’s party “reforms” have ensured that the opinions of Labour members won’t have any impact on party policy in the future. The membership exists to service the desires of the party’s elite MPs, candidates and other high-level representatives.
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Owen Jones for leader of the Labour Party UK……
For every £ invested in or baling out privatised public services the Government should demand a shareholding of equivalent value to protect oue tax payers investment…by law.