Polly has called for Keir Starmer to convene a global energy summit similar to Gordon Brown’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, and to put Britain on a “war footing” to reduce its exposure to fossil fuels.
She warned that economic pain was “hurtling down the tracks” and a bigger response was needed to protect the British people from the consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Polly said that the impending energy crisis caused by the war was “as big as the financial crash” and required “a response of equal magnitude”. She said the increase in prices would not be temporary or regional, and that “economic pain, falling living standards and social anger create fertile ground for extremist politics”.
While she said the government’s convening of 35 countries to discuss the reopening of the strait of Hormuz was a good step, a bigger global response was needed on energy.
“We could be bringing together allies to agree emergency cooperation to stabilise energy markets, protect supply chains, coordinate strategic reserves, and accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels,” she told the Guardian. “We could be strengthening the consensus that energy security is inseparable from global security, and that the alternative is a ‘Hunger Games’ world of resource conflict, scarcity and coercion.”
Billington argued that a “war footing” approach was needed to protect Britain for the long term. She said the Treasury was right to rule out a universal bailout for energy bills but the route to national resilience was “reducing our exposure to fossil fuels”. She said:
“Plug-in solar panels on balconies and in back gardens should become as substantial to the energy security effort as Anderson shelters were to the war effort in 1939-45, allowing ordinary households to contribute to our collective resilience while also cutting their bills.”
Calling for a reduction in reliance on gas, Polly said the government “must be bolder” and said “no option should be off the table, even those that might once have been dismissed as too radical”.