AT teatime on March 23, 2020, an extremely sombre Prime Minister addressed the nation and forbade people from leaving their homes because the threat to lives from Covid was so severe.

Yesterday breakfast-time was a moment of similar magnitude. Ofgem announced that the energy price cap from October 1 will mean the average household’s bill rises 80 per cent to £3,549 – about £300-a-month. It will be more if you are poor and have a pre-payment meter; it will be more, much more, in the new year with the cap now expected to soar to £6,600 – £550-a-month – by April.

It is now no exaggeration to say that lives are at risk, as so many voices from Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis to East Durham Trust’s Graham Easterhow are saying. By October, it is estimated that 25 per cent of British households will not be able to afford their energy bills. People won’t just be choosing between heating and eating, but they will be working out whether they can live with, or die from, the cold in their barely heated homes.

It is a national emergency, and our region, one of the poorer parts of the country, will suffer hardest.

The End Child Poverty Campaign, which is co-chaired by the Bishop of Durham, reported in July that 51 per cent of children in the Middlesbrough constituency, and 40 per cent in Bishop Auckland, were already being brought up in relative poverty. How those figures are going to climb as energy bills soar along with the cost of food, housing, clothing…

Yet there was no sombre Prime Minister on the telly yesterday making a profound announcement, flanked by flags, about what was to come and how the nation would overcome. Instead, Boris Johnson, who is in office but not in power, breezily promised that the help was “clearly going to be augmented” and Nadhim Zahawi, who is about to become the shortest-serving Chancellor in history, happily said “help is coming”.

But the two contenders to be the next Prime Minister, who have been marching around the country for the last month outlining all their innermost thoughts and plans, have so far indicated that they have any plans to match the magnitude of this moment.

With energy costs rising £1,600 this quarter, the big idea of Liz Truss – the favourite to win – is to remove the green levies off energy bills, which would reduce them by £152-a-year, and Rishi Sunak will remove VAT, which will cut £169-a-year.

These are not adequate responses.

If Ms Truss is to be true to the Thatcherite image she is creating for herself, she believes that her scattering of tax cuts will solve the problem, but this fails to understand its depth. The energy rises will cause inflation to touch 18 per cent in the new year which will wipe out the savings of six million people. So many just won’t have the resilience to cope.

To be fair to Mr Sunak, when he was Chancellor, his emergency package gave £150 immediately with £400 to come at £60-a-month over the winter, and up to £1,200 for the most vulnerable.

He drew that up when this October’s cap was expected to be £2,800. In reality, it is £3,549 and rising much further – it therefore follows that a new, proportional package is needed.

But instead, yesterday there was nothing. People just met the announcement with fear for the coming months and without hope that there was help on the horizon. Citizens Advice reported two people a minute calling up in need of crisis support.

This is a profound moment. Although the focus is on household costs, business, which faces uncapped bills, is going to be pushed to the brink – and will have to face customers whose spare cash has gone. Hospitality, again, will be hammered. Where is the equivalent to “eat out to help out” to give them hope?

It is a truly profound moment. Already we see “don’t pay” movements forming up with slogans such as “enough is enough”. The current wave of strikes is an indicator of the stresses just beneath the surface of society.

And it is a bigger moment than just preparing a financial package. Across government, there needs to be a redesign of the failed energy market which is still allowing the generators to make massive profits as prices soar.

And there needs to be a plan to meet our energy emergency: a concerted insulation drive, a massive move to solar and offshore wind energy, an unemotional look at fracking. The Government wants to send our excess refugees to Rwanda – it’d be better if it looked at how it can import solar energy from that country, as it is already thinking of doing from Morocco by 2030.

Covid burst out of China and caught us by surprise; this moment of magnitude has been brewing for six months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Six wasted months, when we should have been preparing for it.

But instead, yesterday when it broke, we got nothing. Where is the politician who can rise to meet this new national emergency?