The gas price is already doing one job. It is making gas painful. Governments don't need to add to that. What they need to do is make the alternative irresistible.
Right now they are doing the opposite.
Electricity — the fuel we need people to switch to — carries £4.5 billion in green levies on UK bills alone. These were loaded onto electricity over forty years to fund the renewable transition. They made sense when electricity was the problem. They make no sense when electricity is the solution.
The renewables they funded are now the cheapest electricity ever built. The levies are a legacy cost sitting on the wrong fuel at the wrong moment.
Take them off.
Move them to general taxation — the same way we fund roads and hospitals and every other public good. The renewable transition is a public good. Fund it publicly. Stop billing it to the household that is trying to do the right thing.
The effect is immediate. Electricity gets cheaper. The heat pump that was marginally more expensive to run than the gas boiler tips into clearly cheaper territory. The EV charging at home undercuts petrol without anyone doing the maths.
No mandate. No ban on gas boilers. No culture war. No new policy required.
The gas price is the stick. You don't need to make it bigger. You need to build the carrot. Make the right choice the cheap choice. The market does the rest.
This is not an argument about punishing fossil fuels. It is an argument about removing an accidental tax on the transition.