If I had a tenner for every time Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers assured us that a Labour Government would cut energy bills, we could probably afford to turn the heating on in winter.
A common party slogan over the past five years has been that investing in building green energy infrastructure and establishing a state-owned energy company could reduce consumers’ electricity bills.
When I typed the postcode of my corner of south-west London into Great British Energy’s website earlier this week, it promised not only the creation of an implausible 68,000 new jobs in the region, but also a “permanent reduction in my energy bills”.
That’s nice to know. But to put it politely, it doesn’t seem very accurate at the moment, as my bills will actually go up by 10%.
Predictably, Miliband was quick to blame everyone else for the price increases.
On X, he argued that “Ofgem’s announcement will be distressing news for families across the country” and that “the expected price cap increase is another consequence of the toxic legacy left by the previous government”, while adding that “we are working flat out to deliver on our clean energy mission by lifting the ban on onshore wind, approving solar and building more renewable energy projects”.
The lower bills promised by Labour may not arrive immediately, but if we just leave it to Miliband, costs will come down.
It is possible that Miliband is fooling himself, but it is hard to imagine anyone else falling for it. In fact, this claim raises two major problems.
First, the government makes decisions that lead to a price increase rather than a price decrease.
It has banned new exploration projects in the North Sea and introduced special taxes that penalize companies foolish enough to invest in the sector. It is not even considering fracking, even though the shale oil boom in the US is the reason energy costs in North America are less than half those in Europe. And it is pushing ahead with the construction of solar and wind power plants, which, while undoubtedly have their place in any modern energy policy, are still unreliable.
