Rachel Reeves is perhaps not a great fan of Donald Trump, but she should be grateful to him nonetheless, and Ed Miliband even more so. The trade war sparked by Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs is about to lower energy prices for UK consumers.
According to a forecast by consultants Cornwall Insight, Ofgem’s price cap will fall in July by 7 per cent – to a level at which the average home with a dual gas and electricity bill will be paying £1,720 a year. It will reverse the uplift in the price cap in April and moderate the rise in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), giving Reeves a bit of breathing room and – temporarily – diverting attention from the fact that Britain has the highest energy prices of any member of the International Energy Agency.
That doesn’t mean that the good news for energy consumers is going to last
The likely fall in the energy price cap from July will be purely a reaction to lower wholesale prices on international markets.
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