Rishi Sunak has opened the door to a windfall tax on oil and gas companies despite previously dismissing the policy. Up until Sue Grey’s report, expected today, Sunak has repeatedly refused to consider the idea in the past when put forward by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. But Partygate is back dominating the headlines.

Sunak is now backing down in the face of a renewed political firestorm engulfing Downing Street yet again over the Partygate scandal and Boris Johnson lying to parliament. Or was it just ‘misleading’? There’s a subtle difference – one means a minister should have no choice but to resign but refuses – the other means you can just ignore the rules. Same indifference.

Downing Street now seems to be working towards a formula of governance. It creates a popular policy and waits until another scandal threatens its already shredded reputation to divert the news narrative – and this latest u-turn will no doubt, to the annoyance of many, do the trick.

It is a convenient coincidence that an announcement was made recently by Ofgem that energy prices would substantially increase, with a renewed announcement, this time, including the expected increase itself of over £800 to the energy price cap only yesterday. With Sunak making an announcement later this week over how he intends to help – the Parygate scandal has effectively been sandwiched between one bit of bad news and one bit of good news.

In the meantime, the markets are fully aware of the governments’ intentions, the effects of the Partygate scandal and they how they intend to use the cost-of-living crisis to best effect. The FT reports that – “shares in some of Britain’s biggest power companies fell sharply on Tuesday as Rishi Sunak drew up plans for a windfall tax on the energy sector to help offset spiralling domestic fuel bills. The chancellor is rushing to complete an emergency energy package to offer relief to households struggling with a spiralling cost of living crisis and the prospect of an £800 increase in fuel costs in the autumn. Drax, owner of the UK’s biggest power station, tumbled 16 per cent, Centrica dropped 10 per cent and SSE fell almost 9 per cent in London. The sell-off came after the Financial Times revealed that Sunak’s officials were working on a possible windfall tax on electricity generators, as well as North Sea oil and gas producers.”