The UK’s consolidation wave is primarily rooted in a fiscal regime that has steadily hardened since the introduction of the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) in May 2022. Triggered by the surge in oil and gas prices following the pandemic and start of the war in Ukraine, the levy was initially presented as a temporary windfall tax aimed at capturing extraordinary profits while British households faced soaring energy bills. However, what followed was a series of extensions by both the conservative and labour governm ...