Chancellor Rachel Reeves keeps telling us she has a plan. So far it’s been a complete disaster.
As the Middle East intensifies, with Iranian-funded Houthi rebels now targeting the Suez Canal, the risks are multiplying fast. Energy prices are surging with the Strait of Hormuz mostly blocked to tankers. Petrol, heating, gas and electricity prices will soar as a result. So will food bills, as oil is used to make fertiliser and feedstock. Even pharmaceuticals could be hit. Businesses face mounting costs, while households are already cutting back spending, the last thing the economy needs. There’s talk of blackouts and a return to a four-day working week if energy has to be rationed.
The UK is drifting towards stagflation, where growth stalls but prices surge. We’re especially exposed because we import so much of our energy, yet our energy secretary Ed Miliband is banning new North Sea oil and gas development. Reeves repeatedly says we did not start this war, but her bungling has put us on the front line of the economic fallout. The OECD has warned that Britain will be the worst hit economy in the G20.
Does any of that sound familiar? It should if you lived through the 1970s. Now we’re heading for a re-run of that decade of disaster. And potentially even worse.
In 1973, Middle East turmoil triggered an energy shock. Oil prices quadrupled and the UK faced real shortages. Government ministers even prepared petrol ration books. Electricity was effectively rationed through the three-day week, with businesses forced to shut for part of the week.
Inflation surged while growth stalled, which is when the term stagflation was coined. Unemployment rose, strikes spread as militant unions ran rampant, and the Winter of Discontent saw rubbish pile up in the streets. Parts of Britain already feel similar today, with bin strikes in Labour-run Birmingham trashing the city.
I’m old enough to remember blackouts, doing homework by candlelight, and neighbours worrying about petrol rationing. And the shame of chancellor Denis Healey going cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout. The decade ended in economic and political failure for Labour, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher. But Labour are back, and the echoes are impossible to ignore.
The left was in full cry in the 1970s, pushing for ever more interventionist policies that would have made the crisis worse. There was talk of wealth taxes, nationalisation and state control of prices. And now it’s happening all over again. Labour’s left and the Green Party’s Zack Polanski are coming up with one crackpot idea after another.
Reeves is trying to divert the blame by banging on about “price gouging” and profiteering, yet she has no evidence to back it up.
Innocent forecourt staff are being abused as a result. Now, she’s turning to supermarkets. But they’re not to blame for today’s rising prices. Their margins remain wafer thin at under 5%. That’s despite a constant stream of new regulation, while employer’s National Insurance hikes and two inflation-busting minimum wage hikes have cost them billions. The new packaging levy will cost them £1.4billion alone, more than the Iran war. You will pay at the tills. Supermarket bosses are furious, with M&S boss Stuart Machin raging at Reeves for pushing up bills.
Reeves is the price gouger. You pay the Treasury a fortune every time you fill up.
In the 1970s, attempts to control prices and wages didn’t curb inflation but they did lead to shortages. Reeves is heading down the same path, blaming businesses to hide the truth. They’re not doing anything wrong. She’s doing everything wrong.
The only consolation is that this will end just as badly for Labour today, as it did in the 1970s. And hopefully we’ll be rid of them for a decade or two. But we face a lot of pain before then, and we’ll hate every minute of it.
