Energy

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Will the energy price spike bring down Boris?

What does the new year have in store for consumers — and families trying to make ends meet? A stumbling recovery at best, with a continuing tide of inflation that I predict will swiftly pass the Bank of England’s current forecast of ‘around 6 per cent by spring 2022’ and take much longer to turn than the Bank’s Cnut-like posturing seeks to suggest. And driving that surge will be the energy price spike, which could be the factor — far more potent than endemic sleaze and proven incompetence — that topples the Johnson regime. Fact: wholesale natural gas prices have quadrupled in the past year. They may drop again in

Wednesday

Robert Peston

Boris and Keir have the energy crisis all wrong

Because of soaring gas and oil prices, and the regulations that determine the energy price cap, it is almost inevitable most of us will face a rise in energy bills of between 40 per cent and 50 per cent from April. For a typical household, that’s an increase in bills of around £600 a year — which would be a painful increase in the cost of living even for those on median (middling) earnings. It would leave the average household spending 6.5 per cent of all their disposable income, after tax and benefits, on heating and power — based on official Office for National Statistics figures. That’s one in every

Thursday

The Spectator

How to cure what ails the NHS

Wrong cure Sir: In referring to the UK as the highest-spending European nation in healthcare proportionate to GDP (‘Hospital pass’, 4 December), Kate Andrews paints an exaggerated picture which is based upon additional expenditure in the NHS during the Covid pandemic, partly accounted for by £38 billion spent on test and trace. The figures are further inflated by the UK suffering a relatively greater fall in GDP. In reality, the NHS has been woefully under-resourced compared to its European counterparts over the past decade, leaving it with approximately 50,000 fewer doctors compared to OECD averages, the second-lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita, and the lowest numbers of MRI scanners.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Why net zero is impossible

Carbon deceit Sir: At this week’s climate change conference, countries will be urged to follow the UK’s ‘lead’ in setting the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (‘Cop out’, 30 October). This goal is impossible for any advanced economy based on mass consumption. The majority of British manufacturing has shifted abroad, where labour is cheap and items are mostly produced with electricity supplied by coal and other fossil fuels. For a real figure for Britain’s emissions, the consumption of goods produced overseas must be included. As our consumption has increased enormously over the past 30 years, this carbon addition will be substantial. It is a dangerous nonsense for rich

The Spectator

The flaw in Britain’s net-zero plan

The COP26 summit is unlikely to be an outright flop. There has been no shortage of drama, with speakers seeming to compete with each other to see who could use the most histrionic language. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to compare the attending leaders to Nazi appeasers. He later apologised. Some progress, albeit small, is being made. A hundred countries have been persuaded, some on the promise of sweeteners worth £14 billion, to sign a pledge to end deforestation by 2030. Brazil, the most important of all, is among them. India has agreed, for the first time, to set itself a date for achieving net-zero

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The contentious issues of religious conversion

Hard to reconcile Sir: Although not an Anglican, I appreciate Michael Nazir-Ali’s dilemma (‘A change of mind and heart’, 23 October) and know many Anglicans whose loyalty to the C of E is being severely tested. But insofar as his theology is classically Protestant and evangelical, it is difficult to see how the former bishop can reconcile it with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the sacraments, the office of the Pope, the role of Mary, purgatory and justification, to name but a few contentious issues. He speaks of how ‘what Anglicanism in its classical form has held most dear is being fulfilled in the progression of the

James Lovelock

Why are we so afraid of nuclear power?

The climate change summit in Glasgow will have one important part of the discussion missing: the role of nuclear power. It seems the government is in no mood for a discussion with the nuclear industry — every one of its applications to exhibit at the COP26 summit has been rejected. That’s a shame, because there are plenty of myths to be addressed. We could discuss the lessons from the plant at Fukushima, seriously harmed by a tsunami in March 2011. Sometime later, two of the reactors overheated, burst and released a small quantity of radioactive material into the environment. At the time of this event, my wife Sandy and I

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: How to feed the world

Doom and gloom Sir: The depressing article by Tom Woodman (‘You must be kidding’, 16 October) confirms my growing fears about the damage being wrought by the promoters of apocalyptic climate change, which has become a dangerous cult with alarming echoes of millenarian doom which has stretched through many previous centuries. While sensible care for the environment is a good thing, the descriptions of a frightening future of the imminent end of the world through drought, flood and fire now imbues every aspect of education and politics. Constantly bombarding young people with the news that the end of the world is nigh has led many of them into completely unnecessary

The Spectator

The government’s net zero strategy doesn’t add up

The commitment to reach ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050 is the most expensive government proposal in modern history. Yet it was rushed through parliament with minimal debate or scrutiny, thanks to a last-minute pledge by Theresa May in 2019, weeks before she left office. She had no credible plan, just a lofty ambition without costings. It has taken the government two-and-a-half years to come up with a proposal — and it is not convincing. The Net Zero Strategy document published this week opens with the Prime Minister’s trademark optimism. ‘We can build back greener, without so much as a hair shirt in sight,’ he writes. ‘In 2050, we will still

Tuesday

Ross Clark

This heat pump scheme is a bung to the rich

Who does the government think will be the 90,000 lucky people who succeed in pocketing £5,000 grants to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps? Just-about-managing homeowners in ‘Red Wall’ seats who strained every sinew to buy a draughty two up, two down – or well-off homeowners with nice period houses, lots of capital and three cars on the drive? Here’s a little clue: even taking into account the £5,000 grant it will still cost upwards of £5,000 to install the heat pump itself, plus another £10,000 for insulation and to install larger radiators – so it is really not an option for the first group. As for the second,

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why Covid means the big state is back

History suggests that when the state expands in a crisis, it doesn’t go back to its pre-crisis level once the emergency is over. After the first world war, the Lloyd George government extended unemployment insurance to most of the workforce, fixed wages for farm workers and introduced rent controls. The second world war led to Attlee’s nationalisations, along with the creation of the NHS and the modern welfare state. In the magazine this week I ask if Covid will lead to a permanently bigger state. There is another danger in all this intervention: can the country afford it? Last year, state spending exceeded 50 per cent of GDP for the first time

Monday

Katy Balls

Why the Treasury shot down Kwasi Kwarteng's energy crisis response

As Boris Johnson’s holiday in Marbella gets underway, back home his ministers are making headlines for infighting following a hostile briefing from the Treasury. The stark rise in energy prices has led industry leaders to warn that some UK factories are at risk of closure within days unless the government steps in to help with spiralling fuel costs. But there appears to be little unity among ministers as to the right response.  In a Sunday media round, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng spoke of the steps he was taking to try to ease the pressure on businesses. Kwarteng told Sky News:  The personal rebuke points to simmering tensions between the two sides ‘What

Thursday

Matt Ridley

China is using the climate as a bargaining chip

China’s President Xi Jinping has apparently not yet decided whether to travel to Glasgow next month for the big climate conference known as COP26. That is no doubt partly because he’s heard about the weather in Glasgow in November, and partly because he knows the whole thing will be a waste of his time. After all, the fact that it is the 26th such meeting and none of the previous 25 solved the problem they set out to solve suggests the odds are that the event will be the flop on the Clyde. But another reason he is hesitating was stated pretty explicitly by his Foreign Minister, Wang Yi: ‘Climate

Thursday

Jeremy Paxman

There’s one upside to having Parkinson’s disease

I am just back from my final salmon fishing trip of the year. I have never had a worse season and have hardly cast a line. This autumn’s almost unprecedented sunshine has been terrible for fishing; the river Tweed had been reduced to a dribble, through which even Alex Salmond could easily lead an invasion force from Scotland to England while wearing a three-piece suit. I returned to find a letter from Salmon & Trout Conservation lying on the mat. It is bizarre that the only friends these fish have are those who want to stick a hook in them. The chief executive sounded at his wits’ end as he

Tuesday

Annabel Denham

Why didn't we listen to the free marketeers?

Economic liberals may feel vindicated by events of the past fortnight. It turns out energy price caps, limits on immigration, over reliance on wind power and IR35 – the taxman’s crackdown on contractors – are all bad ideas, just as they had forewarned. Those same free marketeers may experience a strong temptation to enjoy the schadenfreude. In 2017, some insisted that the only good argument for energy price caps was the Leninist principle of ‘the worse, the better,’ as the move would bring forward the day when the entire policy collapsed. But governments bought into the baseless narrative propagated at the time that energy companies were greedy, price gouging profiteers, and

Friday

Robert Peston

Could the squeeze on living standards bring down Boris?

There is about to be a two-phase onslaught on the living standards of those on low-to-middling incomes. On 1 October the energy price cap, for dual fuel, rises from £1,150 to £1,277. This is a rise of 11 per cent, at a time when furlough is ending and just a few days before the £1,000 a year uplift to Universal Credit is removed (which presumably Boris Johnson will not be swanking about in his big speech to Tory conference). That’s the first hit to living standards. There’ll then be a gradual further erosion of living standards with rising food inflation (of around five per cent, as per what Tesco’s chairman John

Thursday

The Spectator

Which countries have the highest energy bills?

Seeds of change The Chelsea Flower Show opened in autumn for the first time, delayed thanks to the pandemic. The show has been cancelled before due to the world wars — during the second world war the site was used for an anti-aircraft gun emplacement. But it wasn’t always held in Chelsea. It began as the Royal Horticultural Society show in Chiswick, held from 1827 onwards. It moved to Kensington Gardens in 1861 when rival flower shows were attracting visitors away. In 1888 it moved to Temple Gardens, between Fleet Street and the Thames. It was first held in Chelsea — in a single marquee — in 1913. Highly charged

The Spectator

How the Tories have fuelled Britain’s energy crisis

Britain is caught in an energy crisis of the government’s own making. It is true that gas prices have spiked all over the world — but Britain is suffering more than most. Energy suppliers are going out of business, thanks to the government’s price cap. Even fertiliser companies are going bust, with serious knock-on effects for the food industry: the British Meat Processors Association says shortages could hit within a fortnight. The trigger for this crisis has been the sudden surge in demand for gas as the global economy recovers from the Covid lockdowns. Gas prices have doubled in the United States, for example. In Britain, however, prices are five

Martin Vander Weyer

Is government preparing to shake the magic money tree again?

Will my bath water still be hot by Christmas? That’s not a question I’d normally feel a need to share with you, but shortly after this morning’s ablutions I read that Bulb Energy — the UK’s sixth-biggest energy supplier with 1.7 million customers, including me — ‘is seeking a bailout to stay afloat amid surging wholesale gas prices’. The spike in the global gas-price graph is extraordinary, up 250 per cent since the start of 2021 and steeper in August. It has many causes beyond our shores, including depletion of stocks last winter, restricted supplies from Russia, hurricane-hit US refineries and increased Asian demand post-Covid. But as this column has

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Gas prices soar, cabinet reshuffled and a green light for travel

Home To prevent a shortage of meat, which relies on carbon dioxide in its packaging, the government gave millions of taxpayers’ money to an American company to reopen a fertiliser works at Stockton, Co. Durham, that produces the gas as a by-product. The plant had been shut down because of a rise in wholesale gas prices caused by calm weather preventing rival wind-energy production, a fire at an interconnector reducing electricity supplies from France, and Russia putting up the price of its gas exports. Gas-supply companies began to go bust because the government price-cap prevented them from charging as much as they paid for gas. There was clamour for money