1 October
Dear Jacob Rees-Mogg,
As preparations for the Conservative party conference are underway in my home city of Birmingham, I am writing to you in your position as Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. This is a very salient time for me to write to you, as your party’s conference is being held in a city that has been let down immeasurably by your government, and which in fact has the highest level of fuel poverty in Britain in areas such as Hodge Hill.
I am wondering therefore, what you have to say to the people of Birmingham about the future of their energy security, and their ability to keep their children warm this winter? The amount of children in fuel poverty throughout Birmingham is shocking in itself, let alone the impact such energy prices have on local businesses — something that should presumably also be within your remit.
The Prime Minister has been insisting this week that no household in Britain will face energy bills of over £2,500, but this is a blatant lie. It is unclear to me whether she is deliberately obscuring the truth or whether she simply doesn’t understand her own policy. The energy price cap, as I hope sincerely you are aware, caps the unit price and not the price of someone’s bill. The £2,500 figure is an average estimate, not an actual cap, so many people will in fact pay more than this. Can you please offer me an explanation of why your government is not able to succinctly communicate its own policy to the British people?
Then, we of course come to the fact that you have decided not to move forward with a windfall tax, and instead have created what I can only describe as an overly convoluted loan system by which regular working people are once again stolen from. Why on earth we have to spend multiple years in the future paying back this ridiculous policy when no one except yourselves are to blame for the fact our energy prices have risen more than the rest of Western Europe, is quite simply beyond me. You might have noticed that the European Union recently came to an agreement on a windfall tax, to add to the terrible optics of what you are doing.
The war in Ukraine is absolutely a large factor in what is happening currently with energy and everyone understands that, but it is demonstrably clear that our position as a nation is much worse due to the rabid ideological austerity of your own party, which led you to not bother investing in Britain’s energy security, therefore leaving us vulnerable to exactly what is now happening. Not to mention, you even cancelled the insulation policy that Labour had started to implement, which if followed through on would’ve meant that millions more homes were better insulated by now, saving both lives and hard-earned money. This irresponsible attitude towards energy policy has been going on now for over a decade, and I would like to know what you intend to do about it?
Next week, the Conservative party will once again gather in Birmingham after spending a year absolutely decimating its communities, businesses, and families. In early September this year, the city of Birmingham declared a state of emergency due to the impact of the cost of living and energy crises. The child poverty rate in Birmingham is currently about 43%, and our unemployment is at 11.5%. You shouldn’t even be wasting our time by visiting, unless you have a proactive and practically detailed plan for how you are going to solve our crisis.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor
Eleanor