THE UK’s energy bills are set to jump 80 per cent to an average of £3,549 per year from October, regulator Ofgem announced on Friday, describing the huge increase as a ‘crisis’ that needs to be tackled through urgent and decisive government action.
Meanwhile, the caretaker PM Johnson has already announced that workers should be proud that they and their families are going to suffer for the sake of the bosses’ anti-Russian war in the Ukraine.
Emphasising that this price hike is just the beginning and will have a ‘massive impact’ on households across the country, Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brearley warned of another increase in January, reflecting the ‘significant pricing pressure in energy markets’.
Brearley blamed the soaring gas costs in the UK on the conflict in the Ukraine, which Boris Johnson has already announced the UK workers should be proud to pay the cost of, in terms of the huge increases in their heating and food costs.
Ofgem said in a statement on Friday: ‘The increase (in the cap) reflects the continued rise in global wholesale gas prices, which began to surge as the world unlocked from the Covid pandemic and have been driven still higher to record levels by Russia slowly switching off gas supplies to Europe.
‘We know the massive impact this price cap increase will have on households across Britain and the difficult decisions consumers will now have to make, over heating and eating.’
Brearley added: ‘I talk to customers regularly and I know that today’s news will be very worrying for many.’
UK inflation will soar to ‘astronomical’ levels in 2023, a number of bourgeois think tanks warn. Brearley stressed that Britain’s next prime minister – due to be determined on September 5th – will need to take immediate action once in office.
‘It’s clear the new Prime Minister will need to act further to tackle the impact of the price rises that are coming in October and next year,’ he said. ‘The response will need to match the scale of the crisis we have before us.’
One of the candidates for the Tory Premiership, Truss, has already stated that she is for fighting the Ukrainian war to the bitter end, whatever the cost, as the only way to weaken Russia.
Her policy is double-edged. It is to be war with Russia abroad, and at home, war on the working class and its trade unions.
She intends to bring in new anti-union laws that will allow strikes to be banned or broken up by the use of professional strike breakers!
Truss is concentrating not just on breaking the trade unions, and thus leaving the working class open to the most vicious attacks in its history, she is also intent on destroying the NHS, one of the greatest gains of the working class.
She intends to transfer a big chunk of the NHS budget over to ‘Social Care’ thereby wrecking the NHS and closing down hospitals to bring back either private medical care or no care at all.
The outgoing premier Johnson is acting as the cheerleader for the Ukrainian fascists, and may still feature in her cabinet as the Minister for the Ukraine.
The University of York has estimated that 58 per cent of British households are at risk of fuel poverty by next year, and of course, along with it, food poverty – that is not eating on a daily basis.
Even bourgeois charities are saying that working class families face one of the ‘bleakest Christmases’ for years, with inflation already in double-digits and expected to strike 20 per cent in the coming months due to runaway energy bills.
Britain is already suffering from its highest inflation rate since 1982 and is predicted to enter a slump later this year, bringing back even worse conditions than the 1930s.
However, we are not living in the 1930s, the power of the UK working class is intact and workers will certainly use that power to defend their families, their rights and their liberties.
There is not a moment to lose. The TUC Congress is meeting on Monday September 12th. There must be a massive lobby of the TUC Congress to demand that it calls an immediate general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bring in a socialist planned economy.
Only the WRP is fighting for this policy, join it today to build the leadership for organising the British socialist revolution!
