£130 off your bill. The bill is the least of it
The new prime minister is considering shaving £130 a year off energy bills. The bills rose 13% in July, to £1,862. You can do the arithmetic. The arithmetic is not on your side.
A thinktank called Nesta has proposed rearranging the standing charge — 29p a day, every day, for the privilege of being connected to a grid that mostly delivers bad news. The rearrangement costs £3.2bn a year, which will be found in the autumn budget, which is a sentence that has never once ended well.
They will also forgive £2.7bn of electricity debt. Forgiving debt is what you do when you have concluded it will never be paid. Note what that concludes about us.
The deep cause, buried in paragraph nine, as always: the conflict in the Middle East is pushing up the cost of oil and gas, and winter is coming with intent. £130 will not stop it. Nothing stops it. Winter, as always, is unbothered.