Government needs a big-bang solution or faces consequences of rising energy bills

New prime minister must drop small state rhetoric and come up with response to impending crisis

Hard though it is to remember, the UK's energy price cap was originally marketed as a modest measure designed to protect households on expensive variable tariffs from being fleeced. Nobody in early 2019 had the slightest inkling that by the summer of 2022 it would be a key barometer of the UK's economic health.

Yet here we are - one pandemic and one unfinished war later - on tenterhooks for the latest intelligence on what is likely to happen to household gas and electricity bills this winter.