The chances of Boris Johnson making a move against the oil giants are very high

There was a point in the 2015 general election campaign when the Tories were blindsided. It was when Labour unveiled a plan to limit energy bills. For a moment the needle swung heavily in Labour’s favour.

Conservative pollsters found that their own supporters, let alone potential defectors from the other side, were enthusiastic about the idea. Tory leader David Cameron accused his opposite number, Ed Miliband, of wanting to “live in a Marxist universe” but lo and behold, in the 2017 Conservative manifesto there was the proposal to allow the regulator, Ofgem, to impose a price ceiling for customers on standard variable tariffs.

It was a lesson learned and not forgotten. Which is why the chances of Boris Johnson making a move against the oil giants, Shell and BP, while consumers grapple with soaring energy prices, seem very high indeed.

Shell has announced profits of £20bn and BP, £9.5bn, due to rising global wholesale energy prices. Against the fuel poverty being experienced by many households and indeed, businesses, the words of the BP chief Bernard Looney that his company has become a “cash machine” are ill-chosen. They are likely to return to haunt him.

Politicians across the spectrum have long identified three species of corporation as “fair game”. They are the oil majors which hit us in our heating costs and at the petrol pumps; the big banks that make vast profits but then, when they hit the buffers due to their own greed turned to the taxpayer to be rescued; and the utility suppliers who run up large returns on providing us with our essential gas, electricity and water. Mention any of this triumvirate at focus groups and the reaction is universally negative; moderators will struggle to find anyone with a good word to say about them.

Of course, there are the arguments against the state grabbing a portion of their earnings. Our pensions are tied up in their wellbeing; by hitting their profits, by reducing their dividends to shareholders, we’re damaging our own pension pots. It’s entirely valid, but pensions don’t win votes and they always appear distant and remote – money for later, versus banner headlines screaming just how much those businesses are milking us right now. Taking something off them is unlikely to harm our pension pots in the years ahead, also goes the thinking.

There’s the claim that attacking their profits shows a disdain for enterprise, that, as Cameron indicated, we’re turning our backs on capitalism in favour of Marxism. Other companies, it’s said, will be dissuaded from investing in a country that behaves in such a fashion. Not really – it is only those three that arouse such ire. New entrants capable of seriously challenging them are rare, the reason after all why their surpluses are so large is because they’ve got the market pretty much sewn up. Besides, the reasoning follows, it is not as if government would be snatching all their profits, there would still be plenty left over.

It’s a debate that is played out across the media. The front page of a newspaper will proclaim they’re ripping us off while inside, in the business section, there will be a more reflective dissection of their profits usually accompanied by quotes from City analysts applauding their efforts. The former is frequently penned by a “consumer affairs” specialist, the latter by a member of the “City” team.

The exact same split occurs in Whitehall. The populist vote-seekers will thump the table for a crackdown, the more business-minded Treasury types will counsel caution.

It can’t be lost on a desperate Johnson as he casts around for measures that will shore up his plunging popularity that striking Shell and BP would lift him in the charts. His chancellor, already tarnished in some Tory eyes with hiking taxes, may not be so enamoured. This, after all, would be a “windfall tax” against companies that have not been acting improperly, that have only been going about their business. They’re world-leaders too – and we don’t have many of those.

Yes, the counter goes, it may be another form of tax but it’s one that benefits the overwhelming majority at the expense of a gilded few. The truth is the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, would be applauded to the heavens if he took such a step. With one eye on a possible forthcoming Tory leadership contest, he would be foolish to discount it on grounds of ideology; this is about winning votes not sticking to principles.

Sunak will be aware, too, that the oil firms not only paid no corporation tax on their North Sea profits from 2017 to 2020 but also claimed substantial tax reliefs. Over that same period their shareholders collected £44bn in dividends. They may kick and scream if Sunak does seize some of the profits but these are investors who, based on their historic earnings, have little grounds for complaint.

That same Miliband is today Labour’s shadow secretary for climate change. Predictably he is pushing hard for a tax on the oil behemoths. Likewise, the Lib Dems and Greens. So, too, are Tory voters – a whopping 75 per cent said they would support Shell and BP being clobbered when they were asked by Savanta ComRes last month.

Given Johnson’s current plight, with local elections coming in May, if I was Shell and BP, I would be saying to myself it’s not even a question of when but of how much.