An elderly lady with her electric fire on at home in Liverpool
Government urged to tackle high electricity prices and boost insulation in next week’s Budget as elderly, low-income families and homeless people struggle to stay warm
CAMPAIGNERS and trade union leaders urged the government today to tackle high electricity prices and boost insulation in next week’s Budget.
The Energy Crisis Commission, which brings together representatives from Energy UK, the Confederation of British Industry, Citizens Advice and National Energy Action (NEA), highlighted the continuing struggles of households, especially the elderly, low-income families and homeless people, as temperatures drop.
The call came as an emergency severe weather plan was activated for the first time this winter in London, warning of pressure across the health and social care sectors.
While welcoming the government’s commitment to clean energy, the commission said the transition will stall unless ministers take meaningful steps to lower bills.
It warned that Britain remains critically exposed to further energy market volatility and price spikes due to its heavy reliance on gas.
The group urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to use the Budget to set out how the government will reduce the gap between electricity and gas prices, in order to support the energy transition.
It said ministers should also review how policy costs, which fund renewable energy projects and social schemes, are charged.
These are currently added to household bills, but the commission suggested moving them into general taxation or spreading them more evenly across energy types to ease costs for consumers.
He thought he was being tough. And yes, I’m sure Labour strategists smirked. But millions of people across this country weren’t amused. They were horrified. Because this is not leadership. It is cruelty. Cheap, dangerous, divisive cruelty aimed at the people with the least power.
And when I called it out, Tapp threw more playground insults around and called me a communist. That’s McCarthyism. That bleak, paranoid era when smearing people replaced making arguments. That’s where Labour is now.
And of course, all of this bile comes as Westminster prepares for next week’s Budget. Another opportunity for Labour, Reform, and the Conservatives to talk about how they are standing up for ordinary people all while “asking” them to pay more and allowing the very wealthiest to get richer and richer. It’s grotesque.
I obviously disagree with them, but I get why so many people say they’re considering Reform. They can see a truth: the political establishment, of which Reform is part, has been ripping them off for years. Bills through the roof. Wages that don’t stretch. Young people locked out of housing. And into this frustration steps the far right, pointing the finger at migrants and asylum seekers. And instead of confronting that lie head-on, Labour has chosen to echo it.
This week, the Labour government decided, deliberately, to outbid Reform on cruelty. This is morally repugnant and complete political cowardice.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.
Keir Starmer and Labour have slumped in the polls. Photograph: Frank Augstein/Reuters
Keir Starmer accused of failing to adequately strategise while in opposition, leading to uncoordinated policymaking
Keir Starmer is failing to make major improvements to public services partly because he did not plan properly while in opposition, according to a report from the Institute for Government (IfG).
The prime minister went into government without a clear idea about how to achieve his targets, the IfG found, resulting in haphazard attempts to reform various sectors, from the health service to the courts.
The annual report provides a damaging overview of an occasionally chaotic first year in government for Labour, during which the party and Starmer have slumped in the polls.
Nick Davies, a programme director at the IfG and one of the authors of the report, said: “Starmer went into government with a set of missions, but no clear idea about how to achieve them or how those targets fit together in any meaningful way.
“He has not been properly engaged with this process. In opposition he should have been the one to say: ‘This is my view of what public sector reform looks like’, whether that’s on devolution, or the health service, or anything else.
“But there has been a void at the heart of government when it comes to public services.”
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
BAMEX 25 is Mali’s first international defense expo. Photo: screenshot
As panic-inducing travel advisories and doomsaying media reports prophesy the fall of Mali to an Al Qaeda affiliate attacking fuel convoys, the government has re-secured supply routes and hosted Mali’s first international defense expo in a supposedly besieged capital.
Amid a barrage of media reports prophesying the fall of Mali to an Al Qaeda affiliate disrupting its fuel supply by attacking tankers, delegates from ten African countries, Iran, and Turkey attended a defense expo in the capital Bamako from November 11 to 14.
Dismissing this portrayal as a scenario “concocted in the office of foreign intelligence services”, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop insisted that “the fate of Mali, and the destiny of the people in the West African region will not be decided” by the media.
He made these remarks on November 12, addressing a press conference on the sidelines of BAMEX 25, Mali’s first international defense expo, aimed at building “an autonomous security architecture” for Africa in the face of “unprecedented security and geopolitical challenges”.
This expo, he said, is yet another indication of the Malian government’s priority to strengthen its defense and security to combat the threat of terror groups that were spawned across the Sahel by NATO’s destruction of Libya in 2011.
French-spawned terror groups
Mali was among the first and worst affected by these terror groups. Its former colonizer, France, which was a key participant in Libya’s destruction, then deployed its troops, ostensibly to protect Mali. Over the years, its military presence expanded across the Sahel. Alongside, the armed groups also grew in strength, increasing attacks and the area under their control.
This led to a growing perception that French troops in the region were not fighting the terror groups it helped create but guarding its own economic and political interests in maintaining its neocolonial grip over the troubled former colonies.
In 2021, then-prime minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga recalled in an interview the active role played by France in handing over Mali’s territory to terror groups.
“Upon arriving in” the northern town of Kidal in 2013, “France forbade the Malian army from entering. It created an enclave,” and handed it over to Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Dine and Tuareg separatists brought together, he said. Later in 2017, Ansar al Dine coalesced with other terrorist groups to form the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which became one of the most dangerous groups in the Sahel.
“It’s an enclave controlled by France. They have armed groups trained by French officers. And we have evidence of this,” Maiga added in his 2021 interview. “Mali has no access to Kidal.”
However, the new government retook Kidal in November 2023, less than a year and a half after expelling the French troops.
“On the ground today, terrorist groups are no match for Mali’s defense and security forces,” Diop told reporters at the press conference. “There have been enormous efforts to equip Mali’s defense and security forces, which have achieved resounding successes” against the terror groups, he said, adding that this has “forced them to change their strategy and now attack softer targets.”
Attacks on fuel convoys
Early this September, the JNIM started attacks on drivers and their tankers carrying fuel from the Ivory Coast in the Sikasso region of southern Mali. “Due to disruptions in fuel supplies that are affecting the movement of school staff,” the Education Ministry suspended classes for two weeks on October 26.
“Do Not Travel to Mali for any reason due to crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and health,” the US State Department said in a travel advisory on October 25. Three days later, the department issued a second alert, insisting that its citizens in Mali “should” leave the country “using commercial aviation, as overland routes to neighboring countries may not be safe for travel due to terrorist attacks along national highways.”
Australia followed suit on October 29, warning, “If you’re in Mali, you should depart immediately using commercial means while the international airport in Bamako remains open and flights are available. If you decide to remain in Mali, be prepared to shelter in place for an extended period.” Italy and Germany also asked their citizens to leave the country.
Amid the panic-inducing travel advisories and doomsaying media reports, Mali’s president, Col. Assimi Goïta, inaugurated the country’s second Lithium mine on November 3, setting Mali en route to becoming Africa’s leading Lithium producer by 2026.
“There have been disruptions in the supply system,” but “the state organized itself, put in place a strategic plan to resume supplies, to ensure the security of convoys … And gradually, you see that hundreds of trucks are arriving every day to resume supplies to Bamako and other localities,” Diop added in his press conference. “As I speak, Mali is able to ensure the supply of hydrocarbons and petroleum products to its population.”
However, two days after the fuel convoys started arriving, France “advised” its citizens on October 7 to leave Mali “as soon as possible using the remaining available commercial flights” because the “security situation has been deteriorating.”
Mali’s first-ever National Electronic Payments Exhibition was organized in the capital that day by the Professional Association of Banks and Financial Institutions of Mali (APBEF-Mali) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s Interbank Electronic Payment Group (GIM-UEMOA).
Schools reopened on schedule on November 10. That day, President Goïta inaugurated the Presidential Emergency Hospital Project to upgrade six existing health centers in Bamako to district hospitals by the end of 2026, for which a health budget of USD 349.2 million has been allocated. The inauguration also marked the start of construction of nine new hospitals, including in Bougouni, Bandiagara, and Nioro, where attacks had been reported in the recent past.
Despite these indications of improving security, the UK government claimed on November 13 that “Terrorist group Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) has implemented blockades on key routes throughout Southern and Western Mali, including the capital city of Bamako,” where the international defense expo was underway.
“These blockades are targeting fuel trucks and are enforcing checkpoints for individuals attempting to pass through them. Attacks can occur at any time,” added its travel advisory.
A proxy war
“We must not think we are simply facing terrorist groups,” Diop maintains. “No, this is a proxy war, where certain powers, cowardly and unable to confront us directly, are using terrorist groups and asymmetric forces to fight us … These terrorist groups have drones. Where do they come from? Who manufactures them? Who provides them in areas where people cannot even eat?”
Le Monde had reported last year that Ukrainian authorities are training an armed group to use drones. Spokesperson of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Andriy Yusov, had said in an interview that it provided “information, and not only information,” to armed groups fighting the state in Mali.
Earlier in 2022, Diop had written a letter to the UN Security Council, saying Mali had evidence that France was flying missions in Malian airspace to collect intelligence and airdrop arms and ammunition to terror groups.
Mali’s southern neighbor, Burkina Faso, and eastern neighbor, Niger, have also since accused France of supporting terror groups to destabilize their countries after its troops were expelled following a similar sequence of anti-France protests and popular coups.
“Africa is now the epicenter of terrorism,” Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), told France Inter radio on November 10. Calling it a threat to Europe, he insisted it “directly threatens our interests,” effectively trying to set up the case for another military intervention.
Curiously, he went on to add that while the “JNIM wants the fall of the junta and the installation of authorities who back the establishment of a caliphate,” the group itself “is not necessarily capable of controlling Mali, nor does it actually want to.”
Lerner is “saying … it is not even their intention to take Bamako … How [does he] know their intention? Is it you who gives them this intention? Is it you who commands them? Is it you who decides,” questioned Diop.
“This should help us understand how deep the collusion is today between hybrid forces. These are not terrorists – it is a proxy war. But I can assure you that Mali will endure.”
He reiterated that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), are fighting together, convinced that this proxy war is waged on them because they “chose to break the chain of dependency, to break the chain of subjugation to colonial domination.”
He added, “Our countries are being attacked first to break this dynamic and then to prevent other African countries from following this path. And we have understood the political message behind this.” The African Union (AU), however, has not.
“We are not reaching out to the so-called international community to come to our aid”
Amid the chorus by Western countries, the AU’s chairperson, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, called for “a robust, coordinated, and coherent international response to counter terrorism and violent extremism in the Sahel.”
“No action can be … taken in Mali without Malians, without the consent of the Malian state, without the Malian state requesting it,” Diop retorted, affirming, “we are not reaching out to the so-called international community to come to our aid.”
“This call for international action is all the more worrying since Mali has emerged from this type of paradigm,” he added. Having expelled the French troops and asserted sovereignty, “the new paradigm [in the AES] is to trust ourselves and take charge … to ensure the security of our countries rests first and foremost on the shoulders of the people and leaders of our countries.”
An elderly lady with her electric fire on at home in Liverpool
