Households face a £700 rise in energy bills – but Kwasi Kwarteng is having the time of his life

Kwarteng, yet another old Etonian, is hardly going to notice an extra hundred quid or so a month. It’s all just a bit of fun, isn’t it?

Kwarteng would certainly be among the very leading contenders for most highly self-regarding person in Westminster (PA Wire)

“Gotcha! Gotcha!” Pointing and braying, jabbing his finger over at the opposition benches and cracking up laughing. Kwasi Kwarteng had come to the House of Commons because there’d been an announcement of a £700 rise in average household energy bills, and he’s the energy minister.

The single worst piece of energy-related news in decades, if not ever, is the sort of thing that might spoil an energy minister’s day, but Kwasi Kwarteng was having the time of his life.

Though it’s hard to judge as the competition is so very fierce, Kwarteng would certainly be among the very leading contenders for most highly self-regarding person in Westminster. It’s more than possible he was thrilled just to be in the limelight. That the limelight was mainly illuminating the imminent ruination of millions of people’s lives through a truly punishing energy price increase was, you know, not ideal, but, on balance, Kwarteng would probably take it.

He was shouting “Gotcha! Gotcha!” because he was continuing the Tory attack of the hour, which remains, quite possibly the most stupid, most laughable piece of politicking I have ever come by in quite a few years in Westminster.

Before the Brexit referendum, Boris Johnson very clearly promised, in an opinion piece in The Sun, that a vote for Brexit would mean cheaper gas bills. It was a laughable thing to promise, but they didn’t care. As is palpably obvious, both now and then, energy costs rise and fall according to global benchmarks. It was a promise that could never possibly be kept – though it would be wrong to call it a blatant lie because it contained a grain of truth within it, which is that EU member states must charge a minimum of 5 per cent VAT on energy bills. Outside the EU, the UK could scrap VAT altogether.

Johnson promised, in 2016, in black and white, to do this. He is now faced with an unimaginably painful energy price crisis and he isn’t going to do it. As Kwarteng grinned and gurned, pointed and brayed, and generally made quite a thermonuclear t** of himself, the chancellor Rishi Sunak was standing in front of him, explaining that, actually, they wouldn’t be doing this thing they said they would be doing.

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Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves had the temerity to point out that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea, and this really was Kwarteng’s gotcha moment. “I’m glad they can finally see the benefits of Brexit,” Sunak told her, laughing as he did so. Kwarteng went wild. “Gotcha! Gotcha!”

The details of this “gotcha” are so far through the looking glass as to be almost unquantifiable. Remainers, who pointed out that all the promises of Brexit were garbage, are now seen to have been “found out” for daring the government to deliver on these promises, when it isn’t going to do so.

Do they really believe that the Brexit gang openly breaking its promises is a humiliation for other people? It’s hard to tell. The most obvious answer is that it’s all just a game. Which it is. Kwasi Kwarteng, yet another old Etonian, by the way, is hardly going to notice an extra hundred quid or so a month coming off his energy bill at any of his various houses. It’s all just a bit of fun, isn’t it? Apart from for the little people.