Yesterday the UK’s energy regulator Ofgem announced that the energy prices for millions of households will increase by 4% on 1st October driven by the higher price of gas resulting from the US war against Iran.
This increase, which will add an extra £60 a year to the typical household bill, comes at the start of the cold weather season adding intolerable pressure on the millions of families already struggling to pay sky- high energy bills.
This sharp increase is expected to slow down with analysts at the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight forecasting that domestic energy prices may increase by a further 9% at the start of 2027, during the coldest months of the year. The increases have been driven by imperialist orchestrated war in the Ukraine and the latest failed war launched by the US against Iran.
This doomed attempt to impose US mastery over Iran has resulted in household bills in the UK shooting up by around 70%, compared to the bills before the US launched its disastrous military campaign, that has plunged the UK and the entire capitalist world into an economic collapse.
The working class are being made to pay for this crisis, with millions of households in the UK estimated by Energy UK to have run up debt on their energy bills of £6 billion, a figure expected to increase to £7 billion by the end of the year.
Andy Burnham, who took over the reins of the Labour government from the crumbling Starmer administration, pledged to cut energy bills by £300 instead they have gone up by £400, leading to Liberal Democrat spokesperson for energy, Pippa Heylings, saying Burnham needs to ‘wake up to the scale’ of this crisis.
It’s not Burnham or the Labour government that needs to ‘wake up’ to the crisis that is sending millions of workers scrambling around to find enough money to feed their families while paying exorbitant energy bills, but the leaders of the TUC.
These trade union leaders are sitting back passively observing while the British capitalist system dives over the cliff into economic recession.
Meanwhile, this week the influential think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), issued its own dire warning that the huge price increase unleashed by the war against Iran will drive up the UK national debt already standing at the historically high level of £3 trillion.
The IFS said that increase in prices will lead to Labour chancellor John Healey having to spend £5 billion more on benefits, public sector pensions and repayments on the massive national debt.
According to the IMF, the surge in inflation will mean Labour will have to find an extra £1.7 billion, even if inflation remains at the current level of 2.9%, if Healey raises benefits payments in line with price rises. The biggest hit to the government will come from the ballooning debt repayments paid to the international bond speculators who finance the UK.
Britain spent £111.2 billion on debt repayments last year and the IFS estimates that inflation will add an extra £1.8 billion this year.
Healey can’t do anything to bring down the interest demanded by the international bond markets, leaving the only options available to him being to increase taxes, coupled with cutting those benefits that are linked to inflation.
Along with cutting benefits, Healey and Burnham will look to cutting welfare spending, in line with the demands of the bankers, and right-wing press, who have led the charge that bankrupt British capitalism can no longer afford a welfare system, and an NHS that costs £353 billion year.
Capitalism has hit the end of the road, and can only stagger on by making the working class pay for its terminal economic crisis through wars abroad and a class war to the finish at home.
The powerful working class will never passively allow their lives to be destroyed to keep a senile, bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
Workers must force the TUC leaders to get off the fence and mobilise the working class in a general strike to bring down the Burnham government and go forward to a workers government and Socialism.
This is the only way forward!
