Labour Rejects ‘Ideological’ Nationalisation as Solution to Soaring Fuel Bills

The shadow chancellor's rejection of public ownership of gas, electricity and water utilities is the Labour Party's latest roll-back of the '10 Pledges' that got Sir Keir Starmer elected as its new leader in April 2020.

The UK's main opposition party has ruled out nationalisation of public utility monopolies in response to soaring household energy bills.

Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves echoed the ruling Conservative's when she told an online meeting her party wanted to ensure "value for money" for taxpayers.

Reeves' comments to a Monday morning online seminar hosted by Labour in Communications were just the latest example of backtracking on the "10 Pledges" party leader Sir Keir Starmer made during the spring 2020 leadership contest.

“I’m not particularly ideological about this," Reeves stressed. "I want to get value for money for taxpayers and value for money for users of services."

"And I’m not convinced that spending taxpayers’ money on a big swathe of nationalisation is good value for money and would be the priority going into the next election," she added.

That was at odds with Starmer's fifth "pledge" that "public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders" and to "support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water."

The shadow chancellor said she approached the question of nationalisation "on a case-by-case basis".

"I think that some industries are different from others — but when it involves a large use of taxpayers’ money without being clear about how it’s going to improve their services I’m not convinced that that would be a good use of taxpayers’ money when there are so many other priorities right now,” Reeves said.

Labour has used its demand to abolish the five per cent Value-Added Tax (VAT) on household fuel bills to attack Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government.

Reeves claimed in a BBC interview two weeks earlier that the UK was "too reliant on the Russians... for our basic gas needs" and needed to "wean ourselves off that imported gas by investing in renewables".

🎥| Rachel Reeves: "This is a once in a lifetime spike ..but were too reliant on Russia for gas" pic.twitter.com/CFTpQI8Gac

— Politics UK  (@PoliticsForUK) January 9, 2022

In fact over-dependence on unreliable renewable sources such as solar and wind energy during the exceptionally cold winter of 2020-21 that contributed to the European and US energy crises.

Meanwhile, the German government has yet to approve the commencement of gas supplies via the newly-completed Nord Steam 2 pipeline from Russia.