The Guardian view on energy prices: time to cap the cap

theguardian.com:

The scale and damage of the body blow to Britain is suddenly and shockingly real. British consumers face an 80% rise in their energy bills from 1 October, the regulator Ofgem confirmed on Friday morning. In just five weeks’ time, the current annual energy price cap will balloon from £1,971, which itself seemed a spectacular level when it was set in April, to a barely believable £3,549. This means hardship for all and misery for millions. It is an insufferable event. No decent society can allow it to happen.

The magnitude of the latest leap in prices is not unexpected. It has been signalled for months by a volatile energy market and by Russian geopolitics. It is still a breathtaking threat to ordinary life, a tripling of the price of the average dual-fuel domestic tariff in less than a year. But the impact will soon be greater – and the effects more terrible. In January the cap will rise further, perhaps by the same amount again. In April it will soar yet again.

An alarming prospect is about to become a chilling reality during the coldest months of the year. No one should deceive themselves about either the scale or the urgency, least of all a government whose ministers are apparently so laid-back about the damage to come that none of them did the morning media round to respond to the Ofgem announcement. But if they do not realise that the life and temper of the nation have changed, they will soon find out.

In the not very distant days when energy prices rose more gently than they do now, it was possible to argue that the costs, although steep, could be managed without risking social breakdown. Stock solutions included encouraging changes in consumption (as the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, briefly attempted on Friday) and