Why is Sunak's Energy Support So Stingy?
At the centre of Super Sunak's rescue plan is an automatic £150 rebate for Council Tax payers across bands A to D, with a £144m discretionary payment fund doled out to local authorities to cover anyone in band E and/or are particularly in need of support. This rebate will be resourced via government grants, though Sunak did not say if it would cover all or some of the rebate burden. The Tories have form on this, like the time when council tax and housing benefit were devolved to local authorities while cutting a fifth from these budgets. Or perhaps they'll expect councils to eat up the cost now and the grant will come later. Again, entirely the Tory thing to do. Aside aside, Sunak announced an interest-free loan scheme of £200 off energy bills to be paid back in five £40 installments . What people are supposed to do if neither goes far enough, Sunak neglected to say. Then again, while Rachel Reeves criticised the fare offered in the Commons Thursday morning, Labour's proposed VAT cut to bills is similarly weak sauce. The problem is structural: energy production is essential infrastructure that remains in private hands, and is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Effective action requires the socialisation of energy and a swift transition to carbon neutral renewables. Labour aren't interested, of course, and the very notion of radical but necessary would bring the Tories out in a rash.
This begs the question. Why is Sunak's remedial help so meagre? Again, it's not about personal failings (apart from a personal commitment to the narrow politics of privilege) but the politics of the Tory coalition. There's a tiny bit of the ever-reliable divide and rule in Sunak's announcement. 80% of households are getting a tokenistic handout, but more is available for the needy. A set up tailor-made for tabloid exposes and Channel 5 programmes on feckless claimants who use social security money to heat their outdoor pools.
The addition of the loan is slightly more interesting, and there are three ways of thinking about it. With inflation soaring, the tried and trusted Thatcherite measure for combatting it is restricting the money supply. I.e. Pushing down wages. The energy bill loan, goes the thinking, takes the edge off the April price shock and becomes repayable in 2023 when, presumably, things have settled down a bit. The loan means money will be put aside to pay for it and therefore, they hope, won't have inflationary consequences. The second are the disciplinary consequences of debt. It has proven itself an effective method of population management and political pacification by individuating obligation and, from the Tory point of view, inculcating the "virtues" of thrift and living within one's means. If people can't pay back the debt being foisted on us, then that's their fault for not being responsible. Finally, throughout the pandemic the strategy the Tories have been united behind is not to offer too much. Sunak wants to wind the clock back and get politics into a position where there are no expectations on the state at all. This puts the horrors of socialism back into its box, dissolves all thought of a better future in non-neoliberal terms, and the asset economy the Tories depend on can chug along without challenge. At least, that's what they think.
Not that you would get any of this from reading mainstream political comment or the criticisms ventured by opposition politicians. It's all clueless, incompetent, nasty Tories. No scintilla of awareness of their relationship to class and political economy. Nor, most damning of all, any curiosity about why they are what they are either. Unless there is a popular backlash and Sunak's ratings take a tumble independently of the muck Boris Johnson is covering the Tories with, the chancellor will get away with it.
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