Good morning. The cost of living crisis already feels like one of the defining political problems of the era; by the winter, it will be a catastrophe. Anybody still doubting this analysis would have been forced to acknowledge its reality by confirmation on Friday that the new energy price cap will mean typical household energy bills will rise to £3,549 a year from October – and predictions that they will then go to £5,400 in January and more than £6,600 in April.
This morning, a Savanta ComRes poll finds that nearly one in four adults is planning to keep the heating off completely this winter – an alarming prospect when cold homes were responsible for 8,500 deaths in 2019.
