The Real Cost of Energy

“Vote blue, go green” we were told by David Cameron after he became Conservative leader – at the height of an era in which concern for the sustainability of the planet was fashionable, and in which the country could afford to put its money where its mouth was.

Now, times are tougher, people’s pockets are shrinking… and, of course, politicians are pandering to those whims instead. Today the Prime Minister told the House of Commons – to the audible surprise of even many in his own party – that he wanted to “roll back some of the green regulations and charges that are putting up bills”.

This echoes a similar pledge by Nicola Sturgeon on Friday, who said that an SNP government of an independent Scotland would deliver “a real and lasting cut, not a short-term fix” by removing environmental levies from energy bills (that these would instead have to be paid out of general taxation attracted strangely less attention at the conference).

Of course, these are not unilateral changes in policy; they reflect shifting attitudes in society. Hence the unity of purpose that saw Mr Cameron posing with huskies for our newspapers while Ed Miliband was adding green taxes to our energy bills is now being shown as the same two rivals fall over themselves in trying to demonstrate that they really are on our side.

Meanwhile at Grangemouth, the fight to save one of Scotland’s most significant industrial sites – and one of the largest remaining relics of 20th-century energy production – suffered a major blow when the owners, citing massive losses and employees’ unwillingness to compromise, announced that they were closing the petrochemical plant that employs 800 people.

The decision could have huge implications for the UK’s (especially Scotland’s) energy security – the refinery supplies 70% of the fuel used north of the border and also contributes to stocks elsewhere. The closure of such a significant resource is likely to increase our dependence on fuel imported from Europe and the US.

It is also another reminder of the urgent need to invest meaningfully in other, more sustainable forms of production. The current model of subsidies is an unworkable, patchwork solution that relies on a ‘base’ level of continued supply from increasingly volatile sources.

Yet at what is a crunch time for decision-making on this issue, the politicians are bogged down in arguments over whose fault it is, and who would save households more money. The debate has been distorted ever since Mr Miliband launched his populist price-fixing policy, with the government preoccupied in giving us several (very valid) reasons why we shouldn’t be fooled.

But whatever the outcome, it will change nothing about the way we manage our energy supply. Part of the problem is that dire warnings about the uncertain future are so routinely hijacked by sensationalist headlines about ‘the lights going out’ as to be dismissed by those who refuse to believe that the prospects could ever be allowed to get so grim.

And therein lies the political problem – no government will ever admit (even implicitly) that urgent action is needed, for fear of being blamed for creating the situation in the first place.

But the power is in governments’ hands – not by dictating energy firms' business model, but by incentivising a change of priorities, for the good of their own future, as well as the country’s. That way, people like those being abandoned at Grangemouth will not be betrayed by their employers who told them they had a career in an industry with no future.

It’s the sort of predicament that makes politics so infuriating yet so compelling.

No Ordinary Party Conference Season

Normally, party conferences are an excruciating ritual in which a series of politicians, both high-ranking and grassroots, demonstrate a vast overestimation of the importance of their annual shindig (not to mention of themselves), and political journalists work painfully hard to follow suit.

Normally, it’s a desperate struggle to convince even casual followers of politics such as the Sage – let alone Joe Public – that anything that is said or done really matters or has any real consequence. But this year’s conference season wasn’t like how it normally is; this year was different.

Over the past few weeks, the three main Westminster parties – whose gatherings continue to enjoy such complete dominance of the airwaves as to make you think they’re the only choices available – have been marking their territory in preparation (already) for the next general election.

And even at this early stage – with more than 18 months to go – the positions they have staked are the most strikingly differentiated since the days of Thatcher. One has shifted rightwards, while another has bolted to the left; the other has leapt onto the vacant centre ground with a mix of relief and glee.

For at least a generation, political purists have commonly complained that there is little to choose between the main protagonists at election time, as both/all of them have moved ever closer together in recognition of a similar shift in the views of the majority of voters.

New Labour under Tony Blair is widely blamed for starting – or at least validating – this trend; now, we may well be seeing the start of a new era, initiated by two leaders who appear to have sensed, almost simultaneously, a change in the British public to one that is increasingly strong-willed, clear-minded… and divided.

Is it the effects of the economic crisis? Is it the experience of coalition government? Is it a sign of the times? Whatever has led to this ideological empowerment of the British electorate, and however genuine or otherwise it is, the politicians appear to be responding to it, and in doing so, endorsing and reinforcing it.

For most of the three years following the last election, the conventional wisdom was that Britain had entered an age in which coalitions were to be the norm at Westminster, just as they are in most of continental Europe, in many local councils and – with the odd notable exception – in other legislatures such as the Scottish Parliament.

But the British people have never quite been comfortable with the idea of a government that ‘nobody voted for’. A year later, faced with a choice between the current, outdated electoral system and a less-than-perfect proportional system that would make such an outcome almost unavoidable, they chose to retain the age-old status quo.

That same day, Scottish voters overcame a system specifically designed to moderate the power of individual parties in giving the SNP an overwhelming mandate to continue unilaterally the work they had started in coalition, and pursue a referendum on independence.

Then, the English local council elections awakened the Conservatives, in particular, to the threat posed by rivals positioned on the outer wings of the political spectrum to whom voters may migrate should they become dissatisfied by the perceived lack of strength of the three main Parliamentary players. A victory for those on one side brought about by a split vote on the other would be the same defeat for democracy that many perceive a coalition to be.

But as always with elections, the calculations are not solely political. The recession and the slow recovery that has followed, hampered by austerity at home and financial troubles overseas, have hardened – even polarised – the opinions of voters across the economic as well as political scale. Whoever one blames for one’s own circumstances, events will surely have stiffened one’s determination to ensure one’s enemies are not allowed to do more of the same next time.

Of course, there remain many in the country who do not belong to one ‘camp’ or the other – those whom Labour describe as the ‘squeezed middle’ and whom the Tories like to call ‘hard-working people’ – and they will still (probably) both define the campaign and decide the result in 2015.

But it is what this conference season has shown about how the parties intend to reach out to those undecided voters that is so striking, so unusual, and so (potentially) game-changing.

Ed Miliband was rightly berated – and not just by those with a vested interest – for his ridiculous and unworkable price-fixing proposal, but it will inevitably appeal to the thousands of families feeling pressured by rapidly rising energy bills, and aggrieved by the profits being racked up by the ‘big six’ suppliers.

David Cameron was attacked for proposing further tough restrictions on access to benefits, but his defence of his ‘earning or learning’ approach to welfare reform will chime with many who are frustrated by the apparent sense of entitlement felt by a significant minority for whom work still isn’t worth the effort.

Nick Clegg, meanwhile, avoided criticism of his policy announcements, because there weren’t any. Not that this wasn’t a bold pitch by the Lib Dems – their approach to the forthcoming election appears to be along the lines of ‘whichever party wins, we’ll stop them doing half of what they were voted in for’.

At least they’re being honest this time – and incredibly, it might just work. The gamble that Mr Clegg is taking is that large sections of the British electorate, having got so used to marginal decisions, may not be ready for the stark choice that they seem likely to face this time around.

Quite apart from being squeezed between two converging heavyweights, the Lib Dems seem set to benefit from the vacuum created by their rivals’ departure from the centre ground. Thus, a party whose support has dwindled in the light of its first experience in government may yet hold the balance of power once again, as a moderating influence on either warring faction.

So, far from being the usual charade, this year’s party conference season appears not only to have defined the campaign for the next election, but possibly also to have shaped the British party political landscape for several years to come. Just don’t expect the man on the street to have noticed.