Cold homes, fat profits – and a government that ‘asks nicely’

THERE’S a storm threatening, the rain has been pelting for 24 hours, and we’ve reluctantly fired up the heating again.

According to the radio, petrol profiteering by energy companies won’t be tolerated.

BP and Shell must be quaking in their boots at the thought of a meeting with the Energy Secretary, where he will tell them in no uncertain terms not to do what they’ve already done.

I suppose for an industry built on the extraction of the remains of long-dead creatures, the idea of being mauled by a dead sheep may feel particularly galling, but they’ll survive.

Asking nicely doesn’t exactly have a strong track record with such outfits, but maybe Ed Miliband harbours a hidden menace us plebeians have yet to face. I saw no evidence of this when I met him over a decade ago. As leader of the Labour Party he was dragging his heels — to put it generously — on pledging to scrap the bedroom tax. The raw fear etched across his countenance when challenged him on it confirmed my own about him without ever having to reach into my own reserves of menace.

Pleading with energy companies not to profiteer is about as rational as wandering out into the moors in a Scottish winter and begging the sky not to rain. Your voice may reach the clouds, but they’re not listening… because they are clouds.

It is a source of constant amazement that people apparently committed to markets, to capital, or even to a mixed economy look surprised and even disgusted when private enterprise seeks to maximise its profit. I’ve felt it too, but if you believe for an instant that they exist to do anything else, then I’d be delighted to sell you a nimbus to tilt at.

The idea that the Secretary of State should go cap-in-hand to companies that have — literally — coined in billions more than they know how to spend while fuel poverty has sky-rocketed not only demeans his office, and the state itself, but the people in whose name he is trusted to exercise power.

Politicians must play the hand they are deal at times of course, and the fact of the matter is that energy in this country still lies firmly in the grasping paws of a handful of executive profiteers who could sink the economy for fun, could ramp up inflation, and could at the click of finger throw what loosely passes for the Labour government out of power.

If I know that, you better believe the oil executives do — they understand power even if politicians who spend their lives craving it don’t.

The idea that a single, unaccountable sector could hold such leverage over an elected government should, even in a government without politics, really provoke some questions. These same questions are being posed on the decades-long train-wreck of water privatisation in England and the chaos at Royal Mail. The answer on water so far seems to be to continue to force the public to pay the ransom demands while asking the kidnappers to play nice, and it’s not much better in the post.

Change to adapt to more parcels and fewer letters was always going to be challenge at Royal Mail, but market liberalisation, privatisation and ownership led by a succession of asset-stripping incompetents intent on a race to the bottom has not only left people waiting weeks for correspondence which used to arrive the next day, but the very conduct of May’s elections in jeopardy.

There’s something perfect about a political culture which has actively promoted postal ballots to compensate for its falling numbers of activists wrecking the postal system to such an extent as to collapse that machine-dream.

We may be long used to the idea that our political class is willing to tolerate or actively promote private interests above the needs of the many, but the sheer brazenness of prioritising the market over the democracy in this way is remarkable.

Answers to the CWU’s questions on this have been woolly to say the least. An uninterested regulator and a government mumble along the lines of “they just better do it, or else” doesn’t really strike fear into the heart of management.

In my experience such threats are generally met with “or else what?”

Whether in energy or the post, the fact that such outfits don’t feel the need to even ask that question anymore tells its own tale, though. They operate entirely without fear.

Not only without fear of any real government intervention, but without fear of failure. After all, if any of these companies fell over tomorrow, the executives would still have enough in the bank never to have to take a job again.

No, the fear is left to people living with fuel poverty — more than eight million of them across Britain. Promises of investment in renewables to stabilise prices in the long-term is all well and good, but here and now people in an economy which prides itself on being advanced are dying as a direct result of living in cold and damp homes. In 2026.

Not one or two either, because fuel poverty is inextricably linked to “excess” winter deaths that run into the thousands every year and you can bet every penny you have that they’ll be overwhelmingly working class.

A too silent majority, who wittingly or unwittingly rely on the government of the day to fight their corner because no oil executive will.

Thirty years ago, 16 children and a teacher were gunned-down in their school in Dunblane. The government of the day chose the path of negotiation with the gun lobby, but were overtaken by public anger and a general election that brought a ban on handguns. It was understood, even across party lines, that mere regulation ultimately still left the power with the individual holding the weapon.

Attacks still happen, there are still people out there, either through illness or a craving for infamy, willing to kill, but it is surely clear that the ban has saved countless lives — an unprovable claim, yet probably the least controversial in British political discourse.

Out of agony that can scarcely be imagined, survivors and families provided the political class with the backbone to act.  

Cowardice then would have cost more lives.

Some may be uncomfortable that comparisons should be drawn between death from fuel poverty, and deaths in mindless butchery at home or abroad, but every single one robs people of life, this Earth of their immeasurable talent, and leaves friends and family in needless trauma.

And for what exactly?

Cowardice over Gaza cost countless lives and emboldened the US and Israeli regimes to bomb Iranian schools with impunity. For freedom? Not even the attackers seriously make that claim.

The world knows why. They know why the president of Venezuela was kidnapped too, and why governments across South America must now listen to the same threats they’ve had for decades in private played out in public.

That private fortunes can be made by plundering the Earth and holding its resources to ransom and Cuba, as a beacon of what is possible, being taken to the brink is merely the icing on the cake.

There’s more courage in the little finger of the Cuban farmworker than in an entire political class who stumbled into office on a promise of change, only to offer war, genocide, and the hope of a more pleasant poverty.

Miliband can’t solve all of that in one meeting, but no journey begins without the first step.

Recent years have proven that if a price cap flies off with an executive huff and puff it’s no cap at all.

Lines must be drawn. Government must dictate terms to save lives, not ask nicely.

If they fail to do so, a storm really is threatening.