11 AUGUST 2022 | NEWS
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has put forward his plan to deal with the ongoing energy and cost-of-living crises, while simultaneously taking a dig at both the Government and the Opposition for being on holiday instead of helping with the crisis.
Gordon Brown, the former leader of the Labour Party who was Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010, has announced his own solution for helping to alleviate the struggles faced by families across the United Kingdom as energy prices begin to surge and families begin to feel the squeeze amid rising inflation.
Mr Brown argued that the price cap on energy bills should be removed, with prices currently set to rise to as much as £4,200 per average household next year. He stated that it would be necessary to reprogram the Department of Work and Pensions’ computers in the coming days in order to adjust benefit payments accordingly.
His suggestions also included a programme of voluntary energy rationing by individuals.
Additionally, the former Prime Minister suggested that the Government negotiate with energy firms in a bid to lower people’s energy bills by lowering their costs. Lastly, he argued that any energy firms facing bankruptcy should be temporarily nationalised to maintain competition between firms.
Mr Brown wrote in an article for The Guardian:
“it is indeed urgent that the candidates to be Prime Minister – and the current Prime Minister and Chancellor – meet to make not just one or two but several urgently needed decisions: to suspend and fundamentally reform the energy price cap; to agree October payments for those who will not be able to afford to turn up their heating; to home in on alternative supplies abroad and open up appropriate storage facilities at home; to agree voluntary energy reductions; and to help pay for these measures with a watertight windfall tax on energy companies and a tax on the high levels of City bonus payments.”
He continued: “If the companies cannot meet these new requirements, we should consider all the options we used with the banks in 2009: guaranteed loans, equity financing and, if this fails, as a last resort, operate their essential services from the public sector until the crisis is over.”
Mr Brown also attacked present Prime Minister Boris Johnson for being on holiday while the crisis ferments. Mr Johnson has been on a delayed honeymoon following his marriage to his wife, Carrie.
Mr Brown also told The Guardian: “Time and tide wait for no-one. Neither do crises.
“They don’t take holidays, and don’t politely hang fire – certainly not to suit the convenience of a departing PM and the whims of two potential successors.”
There are some suggestions in Westminster that this could also be viewed as a thinly-veiled swipe at the current leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, who is also on holiday at present.
And a Labour Party source told Wolves that Mr Brown is in fact on the Labour Party payroll once more, in an advisory-based role to the leadership and to the Shadow Chancellor.
The source claimed that any such arrangement would most likely take the form of a monthly retainer amounting to potentially thousands of pounds per month. Adding that “the Starmer camp have been chatting to Blair and Mandelson since the beginning”, the source also claimed that a similar arrangement may be in place for Alistair Campbell, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s erstwhile ‘spin doctor’.
It was further claimed that this was well-known among internal Labour Party staff.
It comes following a report in The New Statesman last week that Mr Brown’s staffers have a “direct line” into the current Leader of the Opposition’s office.
However, there are no other immediate signs that Mr Brown or any other former New Labour figures are planning a return to the front line of politics at present.
