Polanski to warn Starmer 'hasn't done enough' to protect energy customers from bill hikes

Zack Polanski is set to call on Sir Keir Starmer to step in and protect energy price cap customers from steep bill rises at the start of July.

Sky News understands the Green Party leader is about to pile further pressure on the prime minister, who has so far dismissed calls to make any more immediate financial decisions as the crisis in Iran continues. Mr Polanski is expected to add to the calls for the prime minister to do more as part of his first major intervention on the economy since becoming the party's leader.

In it, he'll try to position the Greens as a party credible on fiscal policy. He's expected to urge the government to set aside £8.4bn to cover potentially stark energy bill rises once the new price cap ends in June.

He'll suggest the government should "tighten up" the windfall tax on energy companies in a bid to claw back any "excess profiteering" from the war in the Middle East, while he'll push the chancellor to further raise taxes on the rich and equalise capital gains tax with income tax as an immediate revenue raiser. On Monday, Sir Keir announced that the most vulnerable households who have been hit by the sharp increase in the price of heating oil will get help from a £53m support package.

But the government has suggested it will only intervene if "necessary" to help customers who will be shielded by the energy price cap, which comes in from April until the end of June. Mr Polanski is set to warn on Wednesday that the support offered so far isn't enough, following the likes of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in criticising the government's response to the domestic impact of the conflict.

He'll also make the case that energy customers could have been better protected from this latest price shock, were the UK more reliant on clean energy. The Green leader's speech will be delivered at the New Economics Foundation, a think-tank that identifies itself as working towards an economy that "works for people within environmental limits".

Mr Polanski is expected to deliver a broad diagnosis on what's gone wrong with the economy and argue that Britain has gone "from a place which made things people need, to a place which made money for people who owned things". Read more:Voters split over whether Starmer is handling Iran war wellStop blaming Brexit for economic woes, Reeves told It will come a day after Chancellor Rachel Reeves' Mais lecture at the Bayes Business School, in the heart of the City, and less than a month on from Labour's crushing defeat to the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

This week, Labour MP Chris Curtis warned his party risks losing a whole generation of voters to the Greens if it doesn't change course, pressing the government to reform the student loan repayment system and more generally improve its offering to young people. According to Green Party insiders, Mr Polanski has been working to sharpen up his economic offering ever since he became the party's leader in September last year.

He's been having in-depth conversations with the likes of Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, on financial inequality and productivity stagnation. He has also spoken with Gabriel Zucman, the man once referred to as a 'billionaire's nightmare', for his policies around wealth taxation.

It's a clear indicator of Mr Polanski's policy direction, which we already know features a desire to nationalise water companies, introduce rent controls, and more controversially, legalise all drugs. But where his political opponents see him exposed, Mr Polanski will attempt to look strong.

And dispel the criticism that his ideas for power are fully funded by a magic money tree..