The New Statesman magazine this week gave its support to the campaign by Compass for a Windfall Tax of energy companies.

In a leader titled, “Why Labour should follow its own example on a windfall tax,” it says:

Labour, newly in power, had no difficulty in getting the measure through. No Labour MP voted against; no Tory voted for it. Looked at 11 years on, it seems an astonishingly audacious first step towards making reparations to the people of Britain for the preceding 18 years of Conservative looting of state assets.

But if it was right then to relieve the utilities of their ill-gotten gains (ill-gotten because, Labour argued, the utilities had been sold off too cheaply) why is it not similarly appropriate now? Costs to consumers of light and heating have been rising rapidly. Rising even more rapidly, however, have been the energy companies’ profits, up sixfold in just three years.

These unearned riches are the result not of entrepreneurial endeavour or clever management, but of commodity speculation. Meanwhile, the resulting high energy prices are knocking the poorest in society sideways. A Labour government with the confidence it had in 1997 would reclaim this unearned wealth from the top and use it to relieve the burden on the poor.

The new edition hits the shelves today.