We are the country taking the energy crisis least seriously. Even Shell’s boss is baffled
Wars cannot be fought successfully by libertarians. They demand collective effort, shared sacrifice, strategies for deploying scarce economic resources and collaboration with allies. All are anathema to a libertarian like the prime minister, Liz Truss.
State initiative inviting collective effort and sacrifice is off-limits as “nannying”. Demands on the better-off and on companies enjoying extreme windfall profits to share their proper burden are vetoed as coercive and confiscatory. Even working with the foreign “other” is regarded with suspicion as a constraint on sovereignty. Put not your trust in libertarians – especially in war.
It may be indirect, but Britain is in a war against Russia. But we are the country taking the winter threat of Putin-induced energy shortages least seriously. We are alone in not asking for energy savings or efficiencies from business or households in exchange for the generous bounty of an indiscriminate price cap – offered to everyone regardless of circumstance. With negligible capacity to store gas ourselves, we depend on the kindness of EU countries to help us if Putin turns the screw on gas supplies this winter. And we are the country whose incredible fiscal policy – stupendous tax cuts at the same time as huge spending on an indiscriminate energy cap – is cast as if the world were as placid as a millpond, so provoking contagion in the financial markets that risks damage to our allies.
The emphatically non-libertarian Biden administration openly regards Truss as out to lunch – but so do former friends in the EU. The design of Truss’s energy price guarantee package, up to £150bn, is regarded with incredulity. Her veto of a £15m public information campaign designed to suggest how citizens might
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