> "Governments should exist to protect people, not institutions."
> Conservative John Major proposes windfall profits tax on big oil and
> slackening of right wing concentration on possible fraud by the poor
> as very cold winter forecast for Great Britain."
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/22/john-major-windfall-tax-energy
> www.theguardian.com
>
> Wow, is John Major becoming the British Bruce Bartlett ?
Yes, in the sense that both a) are no longer constrained by being in government and subject to pressure from the energy and other business sectors, and b) are convinced that the Republican and Conservative parties which they loyally served have moved too far to the right and are losing the electorally decisive "moderate centre" to the Democrats and Labour as the condition of the US and British working class worsens.
Today's Financial Times ("David Cameron should listen to Sir John Major on energy prices") provides some context for Major's statement:
"When Ed Miliband proposed an 18-month freeze on consumer energy prices and a complete overhaul of the system of regulation of the big six providers, the Labour leader was widely derided. The Treasury, still a slavish disciple of the neoliberal economics that brought the world the 2008 financial crash, jeered that Mr Miliband did not understand markets. The Conservatives accused the opposition party of wanting to travel back to the 1970s.
"Two things have happened during the intervening weeks. The first is that the Conservatives have woken up to the fact that the energy companies are just about as unpopular as the banks; the second is that objective scrutiny has shown that the so-called “market” in energy is feebly regulated and rigged against consumers.
"The link between movements in wholesale energy prices and those charged to customers of fuel to heat and light their homes is at very best opaque. To make matters worse, the government has just signed a deal for a new nuclear plant that is guaranteed to make one of the big energy companies – EDF of France – even more profitable, at the expense, of course, of large increases in the energy bills of people who do run out of money on Thursdays."