Starmer’s ‘five-point plan’ was not a plan | Nils Pratley

Two of the points were measures on energy bills from the autumn budget, another restated the existing energy strategy ‘We have a five-point plan for the immediate crisis,” declared the prime minister during his remarks from Downing Street on Wednesday. Really? Two of his five points were measures on energy bills that pre-date the Iran war. One was a description of support for a sub-set of consumers but dodged the key question of who else could get help. Another stated the government’s longstanding energy strategy in unchanged terms. The last was a diplomatic policy, presumably shoehorned into the cost-of-living passage because a five-point plan sounds better than a four-point one. Let’s take them in order. First: “We’re cutting energy bills by over £100 per household today.” That, very obviously, is not a response to “the immediate crisis”. The chancellor announced in her budget last November that some green levies would be switched into general taxation for three years. At the time, Rachel Reeves claimed a £150 cut, ignoring the awkward reality that energy bills contain many moving parts, such as rising charges for maintaining and upgrading the electricity and