Winter is coldest for the poorest. Having already soared by 13% in July, energy bills will leap by a further 4% in October 2026 and then by another £149 a year in January 2027, pummelling 22 million households in Britain, a country which has some of the highest energy bills throughout the entire developed world. The Labour government has signed the death warrants of thousands of working class people by once again lifting the price cap on energy bills to protect the profits of private energy companies. Between November 2024 and January 2025, 2,544 people were killed in England during three cold episodes lasting days at a time, with 1,630 people being killed in a mere six-day period in January. All the while, 26 of the big energy companies have made £125bn in profits on their operations in Britain since the energy crisis began, with £6bn being made since the start of the war on Iran alone and over half a trillion pounds in profits being raked in globally since 2020.
Eight million adults languish in cold, damp houses in Britain. People with health conditions are significantly more likely to live in this way; in 2025, 22% of those with lung conditions and 25% of people with mental health illnesses lived in cold, damp housing. One in five people living in private rented accommodation report poorer living conditions. Those who cannot afford energy bills have little choice but to take drastic cost saving measures, with some of the most common since 2023 being to go to bed early to keep warm (21%) and heating only one room in the house or not using central heating at all (17%).
Labour’s 2024 pre-election promise was to bring energy bills down by £300 a year by 2030. As it stands, the average household will now be paying £1,723 a year – an increase of £350 a year since 2024. Andy Burnham is attempting to conceal reality when he trumpets that since he came to power Labour has removed VAT on electricity bills. This, however, will do nothing to stem the increase in energy bills and instead ring-fences the profits of energy companies as the base price charged for electricity will not be cut. It instead will mean that the government loses around £850m a year in taxes collected which will inevitably lead to further cuts to public services – so the working class will be hit twice. Yet again, they will be forced to foot the bill of increased market prices and the cost of upgrading the energy infrastructure, in effect subsidising vast, energy monopolies. Burnham’s sleight of hand should fool no one.
Stagnant productivity, Brexit, the pandemic, NATO’s proxy war on Russia, the US-led war on Iran – it has been the poor who have paid for capitalist crisis with over a decade of austerity, falling real-terms wages and the savaging of living standards. And it is just getting worse. Universal Credit support is lower now than it was ten years ago, one in 20 households cannot afford to feed everyone at home and 7.4 million households were unable to afford at least one essential item in the last six months – a record high. Yet 157 billionaires in this country own wealth equivalent to more than a fifth of GDP – a fivefold increase since 1990. The rich are not shivering. It is about time we made them.
