BRITAIN’S energy crisis is a “Dunkirk moment” demanding radical action – and demonstrating that privatisation has failed, two veteran politicians will say today.

Ex-Labour MP Lord Frank Field and former Tory pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann blame privatisation for the crisis and are urging the next prime minister to admit the failure of the policy.

They warn against “poorly targeted taxpayer handouts” and evoke the historic rescue operation at Dunkirk in 1940 to emphasise the need for immediate and drastic action.

Lord Field was a minister in Tony Blair’s government and MP for Birkenhead for 40 years. Baroness Altmann was pensions minister in David Cameron’s Tory government in 2015-16.

“The incoming government must recognise that privatisation has failed consumers who are being forced to pay for collapsed energy suppliers through higher standing charges and soaring costs,” they will say.

“Given what’s been happening to energy prices, it is quite clear that privatisation of supplies has failed.

“This is a Dunkirk moment when patching up simply won’t do. But a review will take many months and there’s a need to help the most vulnerable in the immediate future.”

They say there should be no repeat of targeted assistance, which they argue did not affect prices and fuelled inflation.

“It is in everybody’s interest that justice over price increases is obtained in a way which benefits the whole community by lessening the rate of inflation,” they say.

Johnbosco Nwogbo of public ownership campaign We Own It said: “If this crisis has shown us anything, it is that privatisation is not a way to organise essential services we need to survive. 

“The government is failing to grab this crisis by the horns because they are obsessed with privatisation.

“It’s time to take bold action and decisive action and that means taking our energy into public ownership. Public ownership is helping France keep increases to the energy bills of the French to just 4 per cent at a time when our bills are going up by more than 80 per cent. 

“We need to run our energy for people, not for profit. We simply cannot afford not to and the public fully agrees.”