These are not ordinary times. The cost of living is rising at the fastest rate for forty years.
Looking ahead to winter is frightening. I’ve met pensioners who have no idea how they will heat their homes. Parents who will have to skip meals so their children can eat.
Britain deserves a government that will take this crisis seriously. But the Tories are too busy fighting each other to notice.
Labour has a plan that meets the scale of this crisis.
We would end the injustice that sees people on prepayment meters paying over the odds for their energy. We would bring bills down, paid for by taxing oil and gas producers making huge profits.
And we will set out how we would help people directly this winter in the coming days.
But taking the crisis seriously means planning for the long-term too. Shocks like the Ukraine war are part of the world we live in.
But a strong economy could handle them and a serious government would be prepared.
Take renewable energy. Wind, solar, hydrogen power – we need to scale them all up for climate change and cheaper bills.
But the Tories have no ambition. They have banned onshore wind. New nuclear projects are forever delayed.
Liz Truss now says she wants to crackdown on solar farms too.
It's the same story on home insulation. Houses in Britain are the least energy efficient in Europe. Labour would sort this mess out and invest £6bn a year upgrading 19 million homes.
This would slash the average family bill by £1,000 a year - an amount that could have made a huge difference this winter. If the government had followed Labour’s plan, two million homes would be fitted out by now. Yet still they won’t act.
We have had twelve years of this and Britain deserves better.
The Tories have never planned for a strong economy and have now totally lost control. Labour would invest in the clean, homegrown energy we need to reduce our reliance on expensive foreign gas. We would protect working people through this national emergency.
