This morning, I wake to find Liz Truss has emphatically ruled it out!
Politics Home report that Downing Street is insisting that the prime minister is 'unable to make policy and spending decisions' as the government is coming under growing pressure to urgently address the crisis before the leadership contest concludes in early September.
Yet just after the latest hustings in Darlington last night, while Sunak said he would be “happy to” sit down with Truss and Boris Johnson, Truss said she thought it would be “bizarre” for a “kangaroo committee” to make such decisions.
"Truss, who has rejected the idea of more “handouts”, said “we have a Chancellor, we have a Prime Minister who are in those jobs until September and I think it would be constitutionally deeply undesirable to try and overrule them with a sort of made up committee of the CBI, me and Rishi Sunak”.
She added: “This kangaroo committee you’re proposing sounds bizarre”.
Far from being bizarre it's precisely what any responsible prime minister would do. But as we know, Johnson couldn't care less about anybody except himself and Zahawi is all but invisible. Truss looks to be even worse.
The Conservative party now thinks it is at the centre of the universe and events must wait for them to get themselves ready. The sheer introspection is palpable. It's a national embarrassment.
Although Sunak, told the Darlington hustings audience “of course, I’m happy to do that” he also pointed out that his and Truss’ opinions on how to tackle the problem were different. The two candidates are using a massive crisis which is worrying everybody to further their own ambitions. It's as if we don't exist and is quite shocking to me.
There is also talk of rolling power cuts in January and if so, we really will be back to the 1970s.
I must admit we are very lucky. Firstly, we are not on the gas grid at all and never have been. Our heating is by anthracite. The house was built in 1967 with oil central heating but the then owner had it converted to anthracite when oil prices rocketed after the 1973 middle east war. It's a bit fiddly and not very green but we like it because it's simple (I've replaced the boiler twice myself). Once topped up it will run for several days with just a quick 'clinkering' (10 seconds work) each morning. Anthracite burns quite clean compared to coal and leaves very little ash, which has to be emptied perhaps twice a week (five minutes).
And on the electricity front, we're with EDF and have almost always had a fixed price deal. The last one came to an end in September last year and we fixed it again, this time for two years.
I don't know if EDF will honour the deal, but we have had nothing to suggest they won't. If so, we will be OK until September 2023 by which time I hope things will be closer to normal. I'm not sure if we will benefit from any of the schemes Sunak introduced but we don't need any help ourselves.
However, a lot of households rely on gas totally and are on variable price contracts or even on pre-payment metres. It's clear they won't be able to stay warm and solvent this winter. It needs a national plan to encourage energy saving measures, to get people to move in together and share the bills if that makes sense for them and to offer as much financial help as possible. It will take some organising at local and national level but all we have is paralysis.
We keep being told that OFGEM is setting a price 'cap' but the price just keeps going up and up. What kind of cap is that?
At the moment we have an energy crisis, a national water shortage and strikes affecting the fragmented railway system. I wonder if the public are starting to think wholesale nationalisation maybe wasn't such a good idea after all? It was all predicated on the private sector being able to deliver a better service at lower cost - it all looks comically stupid now doesn't it?
