Time To Energise

The last time that there was double digit inflation, then there was also a Conservative Government. Freezing energy prices at their present rate would still be a 70 per cent increase on last year, which is why 68 per cent of the electorate, more than two thirds and only possible with more than half of Conservative supporters, want renationalisation. The figures for water, rail and mail are comparable.

Only 20 per cent positively support keeping energy private, and again the other figures are in the same area, but somehow our entire Political Class is drawn from the most right-wing fifth of the population, well to the right of the average Conservative voter.

This is partly blind ideology, and it is partly sheer corruption, with the political parties funded by the sole beneficiaries of privatisation, which are almost never companies registered  in the United Kingdom for tax purposes, and which are very often foreign states.

The governing party has no apparent policy whatever. And out of the public purse, Labour and the Liberal Democrats want to give those beneficiaries in the energy sector 10 times more money than it would cost to nationalise them.

Never mind the old debate about nationalisation without compensation. This would be compensation without nationalisation, spending 10 times as much on a six month sticking plaster than it would cost to solve the problem permanently. Tell me again who are the moderates, and who are the extremists.

It is no wonder that the Labour Party is haemorrhaging members, and that the financially healthy organisation bequeathed by Jeremy Corbyn is now effectively bankrupt. Labour is barely, if at all, ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, and Keir Starmer is behind Liz Truss, making him objectively a drag on his party, a dead weight, a liability.

People have realised that there is a world elsewhere, with unions winning very favourable pay deals all over the place, and with huge majorities for strike action. On a turnout of more than 72 per cent, the vote to strike in the Royal Mail was 98.7 per cent. The Conservatives are choosing their new Leader by means of online voting, but they have banned the unions from using it. Yet these are the figures. How are the unions winning, if strikes or threatened strikes do not work? How are the unions winning, if there is no money to meet their "demands"?

The Conservative Party will go into the next General Election with a huge psephological advantage, but if it did not win outright, then the next Parliament would be hung, and the balance of power could and should be held by 20 or 30 Left MPs, if even that many were necessary, with absolutely no sense of affinity with the Labour Party in particular. Point this out if you really and rightly wanted to annoy Keir Starmer's dwindling band of increasingly aggressive and abusive supporters.