Keir Starmer should convene a global energy summit of the same order as Gordon Brown’s response to the 2008 financial crisis and put Britain on a “war footing” to reduce its exposure to fossil fuels, a Labour MP and former government adviser has said.
Polly Billington, who was an aide in Brown’s government, warned that economic pain was “hurtling down the tracks” and a bigger response was needed to protect the British people from the consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The MP for East Thanet said the impending energy crisis caused by the war was “as big as the financial crash” and required “a response of equal magnitude”. She said the increase in prices would not be temporary or regional, and that “economic pain, falling living standards and social anger create fertile ground for extremist politics”.
While she said the government’s convening of 35 countries to discuss the reopening of the strait of Hormuz was a good step, a bigger global response was needed on energy.
“We could be bringing together allies to agree emergency cooperation to stabilise energy markets, protect supply chains, coordinate strategic reserves, and accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels,” she told the Guardian. “We could be strengthening the consensus that energy security is inseparable from global security, and that the alternative is a ‘Hunger Games’ world of resource conflict, scarcity and coercion.”
Her call for a much bigger reaction to the energy crisis comes while many Labour MPs are privately concerned that the government is underreacting to the domestic impact of the war.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the prime minister said the government was bearing down on the cost of living and the Treasury was working up plans for targeted support for energy bills for those who needed it most, if the war continued.
However, some MPs are extremely nervous about the possible electoral consequences of higher petrol prices, energy bills and inflation that threaten to derail the government’s economic plans.
While Reform UK and the Conservatives are calling for more drilling for fossil fuels, the Liberal Democrats are urging a 10p cut in fuel duty as well as cutting VAT on public charging of electric vehicles, and the Greens are asking for universal support for energy bills. The Scottish National party demanded a recall of parliament from Easter recess, saying the government was “sleepwalking into a crisis” on energy.
On Wednesday, Starmer downplayed the idea that families needed to change their behaviour to deal with the possibility of shortages, as seen in some parts of Asia.
But experts have highlighted that shortages in fossil fuels in poorer countries will feed through to higher prices in the west.
Billington argued that a “war footing” approach was needed to protect Britain for the long term. She said the Treasury was right to rule out a universal bailout for energy bills but the route to national resilience was “reducing our exposure to fossil fuels”.
“Plug-in solar panels on balconies and in back gardens should become as substantial to the energy security effort as Anderson shelters were to the war effort in 1939-45, allowing ordinary households to contribute to our collective resilience while also cutting their bills,” she said.
Calling for a reduction in reliance on gas, she said the government “must be bolder” and said “no option should be off the table, even those that might once have been dismissed as too radical”.
Another Labour MP said it was not enough for Starmer to list the government’s achievements in bringing down bills when it was clear from the headlines on the Iran war that prices would soon be heading in the opposite direction. “I want to hear more of a Labour plan about what we will do about it,” he said.
At a press conference on Thursday, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, called rising fuel costs an extra “Trump-Farage-Badenoch tax” and called on the government to take more “action now to tackle the cost of Trump’s war and keep Britain moving”.
