Bulb is just the latest company to go to the wall. It’s time to recognise that the privatisation experiment has failed
Last week, the energy company Bulb became the latest and largest victim of a bloodbath that has seen 25 firms go to the wall. Emergency procedures for “special administration” have been used for the first time, with Bulb effectively being bailed out by the taxpayer to avoid leaving its 1.7 million customers without power. As a result of the UK’s energy crisis, we face a situation where just a few large firms dominate the market, with millions of households expected to face hardship this winter as fuel bills soar. Sound familiar?
Not so long ago, the outsized power of big energy companies was a major political issue. People in the UK paid more for their energy and were less satisfied with their suppliers than almost anywhere else in Europe. Thousands of people were dying every winter because they could not afford to heat their homes. We were told that more competition was the answer: the fresh air of the free market would ventilate the UK’s broken energy system and solve these problems at a stroke. When Ed Miliband first proposed an energy price cap in 2013, he was decried as a mad Marxist – only to see the Conservatives adopt his policy four years later.
Christine Berry is a freelance writer and researcher based in Manchester
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