The Spectator

It would have been easy enough to imagine the 25th anniversary of the Eastern European revolutions being marked with a conference on liberty held in honour of Lady Thatcher — a conference which was held this week. But that is just about the only thing which could possibly have been foreseen from the vantage point of a quarter of a century ago. Who could have predicted then that the stream of Eastern European migrants flooding westwards in the hope of a better life, so welcomed then in their Trabants, would come to be seen so negatively that the desire to keep them out caused the rise of a fourth party in British politics? Even harder to foresee from the month of Tiananmen Square was the economic rise of China.

In a healthy, competitive market, prices go down when costs go down. Not in the energy market. As Ofgem announced this week, the wholesale cost of gas and electricity has dropped by more than a third since this time last year, but our bills have increased. Wholesale power is the cheapest it's been since 2010, so why haven’t the savings been passed onto consumers? The energy industry usually blames price rises on increasing wholesale costs, so the announcement those costs are going down is tricky for them. This week Energy UK, the Big Six trade body, said: ‘Wholesale energy is just one of a number of costs outside of an energy company’s control, which make up a household bill’.