"Nationalization is no longer a dirty word, so put the energy companies in the hands of the public"

Mirror columnist Kevin Maguire questions why energy companies can't go public permanently as Tories battle for No.10 crown" as household budgets burn" Kevin Maguire says energy companies should go public again as Tories fight for No 10 while Britons struggle every day

Returning from vacation and echoing Lib Dem Ed Davey and former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown in demanding an energy freeze to spare families from torrid increases in bills, Keir Starmer plotted a thick red line in British politics.

On the one hand, he and other influential voices are demanding bold and sweeping action to avoid a worsening cost of living crisis.

They want to suspend another cap increase later this month, with typical bills around £1,200 as recently as April and topping £4,000 in January.

And on the other side of that line, Tory politicians with the clout to reverse those hikes - Boris Johnson and Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, battling for the No. 10 crown - fiddle while the household budgets are burning.

Conservatives are ideologically incapable of doing what is necessary in the national interest, with Truss in particular obsessed with unfair tax cuts that, in Sunak's own words, would give big business billions.

Keir Starmer has echoed calls for an energy price freeze to help struggling Britons (

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And he's no savior when another Covid-style intervention is beyond the inner Thatcherite in a Sunak who deserves praise for the leave regime as chancellor during the pandemic, but exasperation for the lamentable mistakes before and since.

Yet Starmer and Davey fail to follow the narrative fully when it is clear that energy and water privatizations are not working. Restoring the pair to public ownership and control would be popular and help with regulation.

Brown has proposed temporary nationalization of energy companies to avoid crippling price hikes, so why not permanently?

Labour MPs beyond the left of the party mutter that Starmer could be forced to turn around and reiterate his abandoned promise to restore electricity and water as public services in England - Wales and Scotland avoiding water privatization.

Rising star Zarah Sultana and the Enough is Enough campaign, which challenges poverty, wages and undecided politics, are gaining traction.

Just like railroad strikers capture a nat...