If Boris Johnson is forced from office by his own MPs, partygate will only be part of the story. Another huge part of it will be his failure to appreciate the full scale of the cost of living crisis now washing over millions of households – especially his reluctance to address the issue of energy bills. Asked on his Indian trip whether he would consider removing the levies which make up around 25 per cent of electricity bills and around 4 per cent of gas bills he replied:
I want to do everything we can to alleviate the cost of living, but there is a lot of prejudice against the green agenda.
Relatively few electricity consumers, I fear, are aware yet of how levies on their bills are helping to line the pockets of the wealthy
Johnson’s refusal to consider scrapping green levies (or let’s call them taxes, because that is what they are) may go a long way to explaining why Steve Baker is now calling for the PM to go – Baker is one of the prime movers behind the Net Zero Scrutiny group of Conservative MPs, one of whose main demands is removing green taxes from bills.
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