Energy battles resume

As Rachel Sylvester writes in today’s Times, the coalition is embarked on the Second Battle of the Energy Bills. The first was one of the bloodiest and most intractable the coalition has endured so far and was only settled with an armistice and eventual treaty last year. All too soon, Ed Miliband’s wheeze on energy bills has sent the Lib Dems and the Tories into conflict with each other again.

The Tories have been briefing out the exact levels of levies that add to energy bills. The Lib Dems, post last week’s Quad meeting, have been letting it be known that they’ve already seen off the barbarian Tory hordes. But the Tories aren’t ready to back off yet and as the deadline is widely seen as being George Osborne’s autumn (sic) statement on 4 December, there are more battles to be fought.

Tories aren’t convinced that Nick Clegg is as implacable as some in his ministerial ranks on squeezing energy bills. They haven’t given up and other areas being studied include network costs and the carbon floor price.

While these tussles are played out behind the scenes, the government hopes to make hay with unemployment figures tomorrow – the PM is clearly intending to try to mock Labour’s criticisms of the coalition’s austerity measures – and GDP figures next week.

The danger for the coalition is that voters come away with the impression that it’s “job done” on the economy –  and this year’s conference season, in which spending promises came much thicker and faster than proposed cuts, didn’t help their case.

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