Britain could use a few energy-saving tips

Maybe Liz Truss is a libertarian but a government that spends £60 billion (at least!) to keep your energy bills down is not. This massive bailout follows furlough, eat-out-to-help-out and a National Insurance hike to bankroll the NHS. The latter has been reversed but the spending has not, so the Government is living off borrowed money.

That our state is still activist was hammered home by Jacob Rees-Mogg at the Tory party conference, where he noted that while he wishes to strip away nonsensical regulation, the basic stuff around integrity and safety will stay (you would not believe, he said, how many people injure themselves each year falling off ladders).

Jacob is rumoured to support a public information campaign to encourage us to use less energy over the winter – a plan blocked by No 10 on the grounds that people don’t like to be told what to do. I could introduce you to a lady called Miss Whiplash who has made lots of money proving that the opposite is true.

Here is a cartoon impression of libertarianism doing damage to the greater cause. For a start, if the Government must borrow or tax to pay my bills, it’s entitled to ask me to be careful with how much I consume. Second, some kind of rationing seems inevitable this winter – because the primary cause of this price surge is a reduction in supply – and it would be better if this were voluntary rather than by compulsion. Asking us to boil less water in the kettle or switch off radiators in the spare bedroom seems small but adds up, deferring rolling blackouts.

Some European governments are already asking for savings, having set the goal of a 15 per cent reduction in gas use; others are going further. Spain tells businesses not to leave doors open with the heating on. Germany says you cannot spotlight public monuments at night. And France has just banned illuminated advertising in cities between 1am and 6am.

Why can’t this all become permanent? The only people who can see advertising in Paris at 3am are the homeless and drunks, neither of whom is the market for a washing machine – yet the insistence that high streets be lit up like Blackpool is a testament to how decadently we waste energy in an era supposedly obsessed with the environment. Hotels are the worst. At the Tory conference, I found the window in my boiling hot room was glued shut – so, in the middle of a pleasant autumn, I was forced to put the air-con on.

Living in what is, by historical terms, “luxury” is not a human right, but so long as the state is happy to guarantee this privilege, you might imagine that it is. Back in the summer, the IMF suggested a different path, urging governments to target subsidies at the poor while allowing prices to rise and reducing consumption. If politicians really are committed to net zero then this is a strategy that squares the circle of keeping us warm and going green. Right now would be the moment to be pushing insulation and, yes, advising His Majesty’s subjects to put a jumper on (post-November, I always wear thermals, and I’m not ashamed to admit it).

Promoting self-discipline? That does sound libertarian. The success of lockdown, with its cheerful voluntarism, suggests we are up for it, too. It would help the Tories to engender a sense of national purpose based around frugality – and given that Putin is responsible for much of this mess, we can legitimately say “Put that light out! There is a war on, you know!” 

At the conference I took part in a debate about the “future of conservatism”, which Dehenna Davison MP (future PM in my opinion) said was defined by hard work and ambition. In that case, I replied, I can’t be a conservative, because I’m very lazy and have no ambition. My brand of Toryism involves dogs, books and keeping the outside world as far away from me as possible.

This makes me unusual in a party of small business – everyone at the conference seemed to own a garden centre – but not among the general populace.

The Tories are gambling on the public wanting to get ahead via growth, but most of us are quite happy getting by. It’s a national characteristic. In the early 1950s, Conservatives favoured tax cuts on the assumption that it might encourage Britons to work harder. The Social Survey, conducted in 1952, shot that idea right down. Not only did “few productive workers” have “any detailed knowledge of the way they were affected by income tax” but there was “no evidence of productive effort being inhibited by the income tax structure.” Only one sixteenth of those interviewed said that if they were taxed less, they might work more.

I take this from David Kynaston’s book Austerity Britain, where he also notes the popular antipathy towards importing America’s much vaunted work ethic. Geoffrey Crowther, then editor of The Economist, warned that the US had “too much competition”, resulting in nervous breakdowns and alcoholism. “They pay too high a price for their wealth,” he said.

It seems I am a model of British frugality. No one could say I’ve spent too much effort to create the tiny pot of wealth that I have today.