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The Jubilee for the Queen’s 70 years on the throne was marked by two days of public holiday, 16,000 street parties, a service at St Paul’s, Trooping the Colour, late pub opening, beacons, bells, and anxiety about the Queen’s health. After Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in parliament that he had added £15 billion of public money to the £9 billion allocated in the spring statement to relieving energy bills, the nation questioned what it meant for their pockets and for Conservative politics. The government would get some of the money for the plan from a windfall tax, or ‘energy profits levy’, of 25 per cent on the profits of oil and gas producers, expected to yield £5 billion this year. Everyone would get an energy bill discount of £400 in October, instead of the £200 loan already offered. Eight million households on means-tested benefits would get £650. Pensioner households would get a winter fuel payment of £300 instead of £200. Before the statement the Prime Minister had remarked in cabinet: ‘How many of you actually remember the 1970s?’
Naturally, political commentators saw the timing of the Chancellor’s statement as an attempt by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, to distract attention from the findings of the Sue Gray report into breaches in No. 10 of coronavirus laws. The report left a strong impression of civil servants and advisers behaving badly with alcohol; someone was sick, a children’s swing broken, red wine spilt on the wall. There were ‘multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff’. Gray declared that it was ‘not appropriate or proportionate’ to investigate the ‘Abba’ party, at which the song ‘The Winner Takes It All’ was played in the Prime Minister’s flat on 13 November 2020 to celebrate Dominic Cummings’s departure.
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