Starmer must call energy summit akin to 2008 crisis response, Labour MP says | Labour
Keir Starmer should call a global energy summit along the lines of Gordon Brown’s response to the 2008 financial crisis and put Britain on a “war footing” to reduce its exposure to fossil fuels, a Labor MP and former government adviser has said.
Polly Billington, who was an aide to Brown’s government, warned that economic difficulties were “pouring over” and that a bigger response was needed to protect the British people from the consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The East Thanet MP said the looming energy crisis caused by war was “as big as the financial crash” and required “a response of equal magnitude”. She said the price rise would be neither temporary nor regional, and that “economic suffering, falling living standards and social anger create fertile ground for extremist policies.”
Although she said the government’s bringing together 35 countries to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz was a good step, a bigger global response was needed in the energy area.
“We could bring allies together to agree emergency cooperation to stabilize energy markets, protect supply chains, coordinate strategic reserves and accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels,” she told the Guardian. “We could strengthen the consensus that energy security is inseparable from global security and that the alternative is a ‘Hunger Games’ world characterized by conflict, shortages and resource constraints.”
His call for a much greater response to the energy crisis comes as many Labor MPs privately worry that the government is not responding sufficiently to the national impact of the war.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the Prime Minister said the Government was pressing on the cost of living and the Treasury was drawing up plans for targeted support for energy bills for those who needed it most, if the war continued.
However, some MPs are extremely nervous about the possible electoral consequences of rising gas prices, energy bills and inflation, which threaten to derail the government’s economic plans.
While Reform UK and the Conservatives call for more drilling for fossil fuels, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a 10p cut in fuel duty as well as a VAT cut on public electric vehicle charging, and the Greens are calling for universal support for energy bills. The Scottish National Party demanded Parliament be recalled over the Easter break, saying the government was “sleepwalking into a crisis” in energy.
On Wednesday, Starmer played down the idea that families needed to change their behavior to cope with the possibility of shortages, as seen in parts of Asia.
But experts stress that shortages of fossil fuels in poorer countries will translate into higher prices in the West.
Billington argued that a “wartime” approach was necessary to protect Britain in the long term. She said the Treasury was right to rule out a universal bailout for energy bills, but the path to national resilience was to “reduce our exposure to fossil fuels”.
“Rechargeable solar panels on balconies and in gardens should become as important to the energy security effort as the Anderson shelters were to the 1939-45 war effort, allowing ordinary households to contribute to our collective resilience while reducing their bills,” she said.
Calling for a reduction in gas dependence, she said the government “needs to be bolder” and “no options should be ruled out, even those that might once have been dismissed as too radical”.
Another Labor MP said it was not enough for Starmer to list the government’s achievements in cutting bills when it was clear from headlines about the Iran war that prices would soon head in the opposite direction. “I want to know more about Labor’s plan on what we will do about this,” he said.
At a press conference on Thursday, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey called the fuel price rise another “Trump-Farage-Badenoch tax” and called on the government to take more “action now to meet the cost of Trump’s war and keep Britain moving”.
