Liz Truss’s energy price freeze would be a mistake

It is not unusual for promises made during an election campaign to fail to survive a headlong impact with reality, but if, as expected Liz Truss, announces an energy price freeze tomorrow, it will leave many Conservative party members who voted for her feeling somewhat cheated. For most of the leadership campaign Truss denounced the idea of government help with energy bills and insisted she would tackle the problem with tax cuts instead. Taxing people and then giving them some of their money back in handouts, she said, was ‘Gordon Brown economics’.

Yet it now seems that not only will she spend large amounts of money to bail out householders’ energy bills, but she will seek to outdo Keir Starmer. Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Truss will set aside £130 billion to freeze domestic bills at, or even a little below, their current level for the next 18 months.