By David Osland

How considerate of multimillionaire Tory Nadhim Zahawi to remind the rest of us that we should carefully monitor energy use over the winter, in the hope of minimising gas and electricity bills, now expected to top four grand.

Without the chancellor of the exchequer’s timely intervention, such blue sky thinking would surely not have occurred to many.

Nevertheless, there was a certain symbolism about the announcement. In his early career as a Conservative backbencher, Mr Zahawi’s biggest moment in the limelight came in the aftermath of the expenses scandal, when it emerged that he had stung the taxpayer for £5,822.27 towards the cost of electricity and heating oil for his country estate in Warwickshire.

The tab included the cost of heating his stables. In other words, in a country in which 8,500 of the less well off freeze to death in even a normal year, the public was footing the bill to keep an extremely wealthy politician’s horses from getting too chilly. Couldn’t expect the nags to make do with horse blankets, could we?

Such a grotesque vignette encapsulates British life so perfectly right now that it would have been hugely applauded had it emerged from the pen of a gifted satirist, or even dismissed as a little far-fetched.

It will by now have dawned on even the most disconnected of the super-rich that an extensive chunk of the population – including many who are relatively affluent on most other metrics – will shortly be plunged into fuel poverty.

One might even have expected the situation to dominate the Tory leadership contest that will determine whether Britain’s next prime minister is Liz Truss or Liz Truss.

But that role has been usurped by a la-la land debate over whether it would be better to redouble austerity as a precursor to further tax cuts for the rich, or cut taxes for the rich first and pay for it with redoubled austerity later.

To be fair, Rishi Sunak has mentioned the possibility of millions being plunged into destitution, if only by way of a casual aside.

But to paraphrase the most famous words The Sun put in the mouth of James Callaghan, it’s almost a case of ‘Energy crisis? What crisis?’ The reader alone will decide whether such attitudes exemplify admirable bourgeois sangfroid, callous indifference or mere abject complacency.

Labour has stepped forward with its answer, in the shape of what it says is a fully-costed plan that will mean people do not pay a penny more on their energy bills this winter.

Sure, the scheme was largely ripped off from earlier proposals from the Liberal Democrats. The numbers may or may not stack up, but let’s buy the claims for present purposes. The fact is that it is the boldest initiative yet undertaken by Keir Starmer in the two years of his leadership.

It has apparently resonated with the public, and looks to be a factor in Labour’s present double-digit poll lead, confirmed by Mr Zahawi’s YouGov among others.

Nevertheless, it boils down to an open-ended commitment to throw £29bn at Britain’s privatised ‘energy suppliers’.

I use the inverted commas because ‘energy suppliers’ don’t actually supply any energy: their very existence is down to a risible dogma-crazed Thatcherite attempt to remake a natural monopoly into some sort of Heath Robinson quasi-market.

The obvious socialist answer – which would be in line with the commitments that formed such an important part of Sir Keir’s leadership campaign – would be to bring these companies into social ownership.

The TUC believes that control of the top five energy suppliers could be achieved for just £2.9bn, little more than the price of the bailout of Bulb. The monopoly rents they generate – because they were designed to generate profits rather than electricity – could then subsidise bills instead of funding dividends.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what Truss will do once she is ensconced in Number Ten. Presumably she will have to come up with an offer at least as attractive as Labour’s.

Some limited measures are already in place, including a £400 cut in the bill for every household, and more for low income and vulnerable households and for pensioners.

There are media reports that Truss is considering a 5% cut in VAT, said to save the average household £1,300 a year. This is being branded ‘the nuclear option’, but in this instance, even the nuclear option will not be enough.

But once again there is a disconnect between the leaderships of all major parties and the public mood, with two to one support for publicly-owned utility companies. Labour should be throwing its weight behind the demand.

Meanwhile, let us pray for a relatively mild winter. A cold one would kill thousands more people, in an economy that supports 177 billionaires.

As a bare minimum, every child, every adult and every older person should be at least as warm as Nadhim Zahawi’s horses.

David Osland is a member of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP and a long-time left wing journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter at @David__Osland

Image: Nadhim Zahawi MP. Source: https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Members/4113/Portrait?cropType=ThreeTwo. Author: Richard Townshend, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.