Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was £1,287.  Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to £3,582 in October and to £4,266 in January 2023.  Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount.  All but those at the very top of the income ladder will instead cut back on energy use, with those at the bottom forced to self-disconnect.  The problem is far worse for business users, who are not “protected” by the price “cap” imposed by the regulator.  Energy is often the third largest cost – after wages and taxes – to businesses which have already been struggling with higher input and debt-servicing costs.  What this is pointing to is a major affordability crisis this winter, with growing concerns for public health and the likelihood of a recessionary wave of business insolvencies.

As with the 2008 crash, the Versailles-on-Thames establishment are keen to point out that “nobody could have seen it coming.”  After all, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” coming just as the economy was staggering out of a two-year pandemic – itself arriving just months after the UK finalised Brexit – amounts to a combination of events which would have been considered outlandish in a work of fiction…  except that a work of partial fiction – a docudrama – accurately set out the main causes of the UK’s current energy woes eighteen years ago.

In 2003, BBC programme makers began work on a series called “If… ,” which aimed to explore the future crises which required political leaders to act immediately, using drama to make the point.  The three series, which were broadcast between March 2004 and May 2006, tackled issues like the impact of obesity on public health, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and intergenerational conflict between the boomers and millennials…

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