DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Politicians posture as the lights go out

Yesterday the head of the regulator Ofgem warned consumers to expect another rise in their already painfully-high energy bills – which have more than doubled since 2004, to £1,300 a year.

The reason for the increase is devastatingly simple: our power industry – once among the best in the world – can no longer produce anything like the energy we need to keep the lights on.

So we have to import gas from unstable countries such as Russia – at hugely inflated prices.

Energy bills have more than doubled since 2004, to £1,300 a year

Indeed, so grave is our energy shortage that Ofgem likened it to being on a rollercoaster ‘heading downhill – fast’.

In April alone, there will be a ten per cent fall in capacity when Draconian environmental targets force the premature closure of coal and oil-fired power stations.

If the lights do go out, history will be harsh on a posturing political class  that – in order to burnish its ‘green credentials’ – has left Britain at the mercy of foreign powers for heat and light.

But then successive governments, obsessed by short-termism, have made a mess of energy policy.

Ineffective sources of energy such as wind farms are not replacing our aging nuclear plants

First, ministers sold off Britain’s power firms to foreign companies with no interest in securing this country’s needs.

Then, instead of commissioning replacements for ageing nuclear power plants, politicians fixated over ineffective wind farms and installing sockets for electric cars nobody wants to drive.

 

   

But the Coalition has been in a class of its own. In 2010 – pandering to the whim of Lib Dem activists – ministers said there would be absolutely no subsidies for opening new nuclear plants.
Now, with three years wasted, and the Energy Department in disarray, it emerges they plan to offer guaranteed subsidies after all – which we will all spend the next 40 years paying for!

In a sane world, ministers would immediately suspend their green edicts, scrap green taxes on energy bills and keep open existing coal power stations until we are producing enough clean power to stand on our own two feet.

Time to lay off BP

Will BP’s punishment for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill ever end? Egged on by the Obama administration, prosecutors have already hammered the company with the biggest fine – £2.5billion – ever imposed by an American court.

It has paid £12.6billion in compensation and was barred from bidding for contracts in the US. Next week, it will be dragged to court yet again, with the states of Louisiana and Alabama alone seeking damages of almost £22billion.

Yes, BP was guilty of serious failings. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion we are witnessing a brutal, politically-motivated vendetta against Britain by America.

David Cameron is doing a good job drumming up business for this country on his trip to India.

He could earn even more Brownie points if he reminded his ‘friend’ President Obama of our so-called special relationship – and told him to lay off a company that countless Britons rely on for jobs and their pension investments.

Full-time gimmickry

Nick Clegg – that conveyer belt of feeble gimmicks – is calling for MPs to be allowed to do a ‘job share’ to encourage more women to enter politics.

Part-time MPs? They already have three months’ holiday a year, hardly ever work on Fridays, no longer sit late at night and have their own £750,000 creche so they can take their children to work.

Perhaps Mr Clegg – who is famously in thrall to a very forceful Mrs Clegg – has been too busy hosting his weekly radio phone-in to notice.