Lobby your MP now to support EDM 428, calling on government to abandon privatisation plans.

Following media reports over the Christmas/New Year period of our forthcoming campaign on the Post Office and Royal Mail, we’re today asking for your urgent help to get MPs to support EDM 428.
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This week the government will face growing backbench and grassroots pressure to force energy companies to immediately pass on cost cuts to consumers. Leading backbench Labour MPs have tabled a fresh EDM urging government to take aggressive action on energy companies who refuse to pass cost cuts onto consumers.

On Thursday 11 December Fabian Hamilton MP tabled a fresh EDM calling on the government to actively intervene to force companies to reduce consumers energy bills and to then implement a windfall tax if they refuse to do so. Early Day Motion 268 reads:
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Rising energy and fuel prices are affecting everyone but it’s the poorest and those on fixed incomes who are paying the heaviest price. The warm summer weather will not mask the anxiety and anger at dramatically rising bills for the essentials of life – light and heat.

We believe that the moment is right for the government to levy a sensible one off windfall tax to guarantee social and environmental justice both now and in the future. This is why.

The average annual spend on domestic energy per household has now breached £1200. Since 2000 we have faced gas price rises of 100% and electricity price rises of 61% – with further increases including British Gas raising its gas bills by a record 35%. Simultaneously the main energy providers have seen their profits rise from £557 million in 2003 to now over £3 billion. This alongside the recent news of profits made by oil companies – BP is now making £37 million a day with a 23% increase in profits to £6.7 billion for the first 6 months of 2008.
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The Glasgow East byelection result is another nail in the coffin of New Labour. Across the country, the electorate are crying out for change, they want a government that can help improve their lives.

But a politics that is rooted in the 1990s has simply run out of answers. In response, the government once again claim they are listening, but things still seem unlikely to change; despite political wipe-out now staring Labour in the face.

If Labour politicians refuse to protect people from the economic forces that are harming their lives it’s no wonder people are turning to other political parties.

This awful defeat vindicates what Compass has been saying for three years – that the coalition that brought Labour to power in 1997 has been shattered. Between 1997 and 2005, the party lost 4 million voters – and this time we saw a further pulling-away of the working-class vote that New Labour has always ill-advisedly taken for granted.
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Though Labour’s loss of Crewe and Nantwich is a blow for Labour and an unwelcome boost for the Conservatives, it hardly represents a surprise.

The Brown government’s serial mistakes – most notably, the recent watershed abolition of the 10p tax band – and failure to develop a convincing political narrative were always going to make success difficult, but the death blow to the party’s chances was delivered by an inept, negative and poisonous campaign.
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