Truss is foolish to block Rees Mogg’s energy saving campaign

When you have defined yourself against the nanny state and scorned the idea of limiting supermarket ‘two for one’ offers, it is only natural that you will go on to reject the case for a £15 million public information campaign to try to persuade people to take fewer baths and turn their thermostats down. The Prime Minister has rejected such a campaign in spite of it being backed by her business secretary, Jacob Rees Mogg – putting Rees Mogg in the unlikely position of the nation’s nanny-in-chief.

These kind of campaigns have a bit of a poor history, as anyone who remembers the 1976 drought will recall. Hapless minister for drought Dennis Howell was ridiculed for telling us he was sharing baths with his wife Brenda and that we should do the same (presumably with our own wives, not with Brenda). You don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to work out what would happen the moment that ministers popped up on our screens to give us idiots’ advice about turning down the heating and turning off appliances.