The government should go further than it thinks in helping with energy bills

The former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling has added his name to the chorus of voices calling upon the government to act quickly to avoid households having to face a “lethal cocktail” of inflation and possible recession.

Not all that unusual in the current climate, and Darling has been out of frontline politics for quite a while. However, the former frontbencher was chancellor while the country was dealing with the 2008 financial crisis – and there was one particular line in his interview with the BBC on Monday that caught my eye. Darling said that a lesson he learned from 2008 was that “you’ve got to do more than people expect and you’ve got to do it more quickly than people expect if it’s going to work”.

“You need something significant and substantial and you need it now, because people’s bills are going to start coming in in a few weeks’ time,” Darling told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It needs bold action taken by the government now, not fiddling around with small measures that frankly won’t make any difference at all.”

The country has been waiting for the government – or indeed the expected next prime minister in Liz Truss – to lay out exactly what extra help will be available, with Darling saying that what has been announced already does not go anywhere near far enough. “Frankly, the stuff that’s been announced so far might have passed muster earlier this year. It simply won’t do now. You need something far more substantial than that unless you are willing to see substantial damage being done to our economy,” he said.

The government may yet surprise us, but it is interesting to note the figures Darling was talking about back 14 years ago. “It’s going to cost money. When I announced the package in 2008 when it was the banking crisis, it amounted in total to about £500bn, but actually, we got all of that money back over the following years.”

The situations are obviously not completely comparable – not least given a Conservative government is now in charge – but the “more, faster” mantra might come sharply into focus if the Tories continue to wait until the new PM is installed.

The government might be wise to take the advice of the former chancellor.