Sooner or later it is going to dawn on Ed Miliband and the rest of the government that anger over Britain’s sky-high energy prices is not going to go away. They are no longer going to be able to conceal the obvious evidence that UK consumers and businesses are paying significantly more for their energy than their counterparts in comparable countries. They are also not going to get away with blaming the war in Iran, nor with maintaining the pretence that the government’s green policies are helping to bring down bills.

Yesterday it was the turn of Marks & Spencer chief executive Stuart Machin to highlight the issue. Green levies and other policy costs, he revealed, now make up more than half of his company’s energy bills. While war in Iran has driven up wholesale prices, he said, the greater misery has come from the extras added to bills, not from wholesale prices. Prior to the Iran crisis, wholesale prices were standing much lower than they did in 2022 after the Ukraine invasion. But........

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