The Chancellor presented silly forecasts from the OBR that some of us said were out of date when published. How are they getting on with a forecast for oil prices staying around $65? What revisions would they now make to inflation and unemployment with energy costs so much higher?
Like the rest of the government the Chancellor does not seem to know there is a war on, or if she has now seen it does not think she needs to take action anytime soon to adjust our economy to new circumstances.
What should she do? She should get taxes on energy way down to offset the impact of the higher prices. 55% of the pump price for fuel is tax, so offset the rise in oil prices. Suspend VAT temporarily from domestic gas. Talk to the oil and gas companies about getting their taxes down to a level where they will maximise current output and put in more capacity with a big investment surge.
The Treasury will get a windfall increase in tax from higher energy prices. However, borrowing is still too high so the government needs to embark urgently on the spending reductions the Opposition has proposed to take the pressure off the bond markets and interest rates. It would help if the government cancelled all their proposed extra payments to foreign governments and the EU over Chagos re set, steel compensation, and the extra payments to illegal migrants the Home Secretary has announced..
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March 10, 2026
Dear Sir John, Starmer has opted out of the war so it is effectively cancelled. It isn’t happening in Starmer’s World. The safety guard /watchman in Portsmouth dockyard has been told to let No 10 know when the paint has dried on HMS Dragon, union rules permitting and only during normal working hours.
Next!
March 10, 2026
Yes, it’s becoming too easy to make Starmer look a humiliated fool, even the impotent Macron feels emboldened to do so. Sending the French navy to ‘protect’ Cyprus and UK interests in the Med. is calculated to insult, does Starmer not see it?
If we kept producing most of our own oil and gas and buy it on long term fixed price contracts (cost plus?), wouldn’t that be the best way to protect the UK from ‘international shocks’?
March 10, 2026
Yesterday Sakara Gold made some ludicrous statements regarding imports of electricity. Having checked with NESO, last year we imported 16% of our electricity at a cost of £3,5 billion and to get the record straight, when prices go negative usually on windy summers days the renewable operators continue to be paid through CFD of constraints payments.
You say remove VAT temporarily from gas, you know this is not possible without EU permission which Starmer would never ask for. Why temporarily and not permanently in gas and electricity.
March 10, 2026
The figures for imports and exports of electricity over the interconnectors for 2024 show the average cost of imports to be £69/MWhr and exports £21/MWhr. Note BTW that the operating CfD for offshore wind (weighted by installed capacity) is £149/MWhr. So any excess wind exported is sold at a huge loss. Figure 8 on P23 of NESO’s Clean Power 2030 Annex 4 (Costs and Benefit Analysis) quite clearly shows that for all scenarios the price of electricity imports will be higher than those for exports. A natural consequence of weather dependent electricity.
March 10, 2026
VAT is surely no longer in the EUs control?
The U.K. Government can act in the UKs interest. We set it free in 2016.
March 11, 2026
It can’t because it gave NI to the EU as a hostage state.
March 11, 2026
So VAT rates with Ni must diverge.
March 11, 2026
Government could indeed act in UK interests but so rarely even try to do so. Not under Health, Wilson, Callaghan, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Boris,Sunak or Starmer. Even Thatcher made huge errors appointing John Major, the ERM fiasco, closing grammar schools, burying us further into the EU.
March 10, 2026
She does not know what to do.
If she does something it’s pot luck, might help, might sink us completely.
Honestly we can’t go on like this, we have to address the root cause of our unending problems.
Could you think about that please JR and give us your assessment of what can be done?
March 10, 2026
It is obvious what to do:- Cut red tape, halve the size of the state, ditch net zero, stop rigging markets, go for easy hire and fire, deter low skilled net cost immigration, cut and simplify taxes… alas she and this government keep doing the complete reverse.
March 10, 2026
How do we return people capable of doing these obvious things to Parliament, and PDQ?
March 10, 2026
How about 1m adults blockading Westminster and beyond carrying placards reading things like ‘Starmer Blind, Rachel Incompetent, Lammy a bad joke, Cabinet are Fools’?
March 10, 2026
Your suggestions would help tremendously. She won’t do it because of politics, ideology and self interest.
We have a political system and class that more than ever does not prioritise the good of the people.
March 10, 2026
This is all ridiculous and highly damaging, not just short term damage but serious societal and economic long term damage. We have got to get rid of Starmer’s Gang. We can’t assume Starmer won’t cancel or postpone the General Election expected in 2029. Thee is no law preventing him. Would you please initiate something that will result in a general election? Difficult with the Gang having such a large majority. But there being so many lunatics in politics now the FPTP system could by some quirk result in a majority for any remotely sensible party, Left or Right. I have often thought that if we could extract all the true patriotic conservatives from their existing parties into a new one it would win hands down. The days of the broad church are gone because the electorate is too disparate and deeply divided. It is communal like India before partition but with many more incompatible identities than just Hindus and Muslims. Starmer’s gang, riddled as it is with Fabians and assorted communists, is not on the side of Britain. Fabians believe nation states should not even exist. Starmer’s Gang is the enemy within the gates. Oh! dear me, I forgot. We no longer have any gates. Starmer’s Gang is the doormat welcoming any and all cultural groups who hate Britain as much as the Gang does and come only to rob it.
Reply Conservatives suffered a heavy defeat so we have nothing like the votes needed to require a new election. There is no reason to think Labour will cancel the next election. They have just backed down over Council elections.
March 10, 2026
“Fabians believe nation states should not even exist” why would anyone fight to defend a state from invasion if it has open borders and in-effect does not even exist?
Labour and Two Tier Kier are now trying to further divide the nation by bringing in a mad definition of Islamophobia like most Labour policies it will do the complete reverse of what Labour suggests!
March 10, 2026
Reply to reply. The cancellation of Council Elections which backfired was just a test for suspending a GE. Perhaps Trump has double sixed him by invading Iran too early.
You can be sure Starmer and the unelected PM Hermer will find a way to cling to power.
The next thing will be Reform etc prescribed as terrorists but not the Muslim Brotherhood or the IRG.
March 10, 2026
Good morning.
Anyone seen the price of petrol these days ?
What gets me is the variance between forecourts, with prices differing between 2 and 10p per litre for the same stuff. And as usual, the go up quickly but take time to come down. So there is a bit of price gouging going on. Any cut in taxes will just be pocketed by the sellers.
Pity we demolished all those coal fired stations and not built nuclear ones to replace them. We could have has a rival (electric) to petrol, certainly for small journeys.
March 10, 2026
I suspect the differences depend on whether they had a recent delivery, and whether they had guaranteed prices from stock owned in distribution. Prices have been very volatile. Today they are down substantially from early yesterday. Pity the petrol station that got lumbered with yesterday’s high price along with the domestic kerosene buyer desperate to avoid running out.
There’s no OFGEM cap for them. But the big increases in that are for renewables related costs for More Grid.
March 10, 2026
how comes the new supreme leader of Iran, already injured, dead within days I assume, owns several large houses in the UK? which he has presumably visited? why is the UK so welcoming to such people? why was he given a visa? why has he not had his property confiscated?
March 10, 2026
World dictators always have comfortable bolt holes to escape to, should they be needed.
Ideally in a country under more control than they have managed – favours can always be bought with hidden bank accounts.
March 10, 2026
. It would help if the government cancelled all their proposed extra payments to foreign governments and the EU over Chagos re set, steel compensation, and the extra payments to illegal migrants the Home Secretary has announced..
But don’t forget the extra billions for the workshy bone idle core liebour voters to sit on there arses drinking white lightning all day while the rest of us work hard paying our taxes to keep these parasites to not work living off us like leaches
March 10, 2026
The purpose of the Reeves statement was simply to say that when inflation goes up now it is entirely due to the war. This is in addition to her previous statements that whenever inflation went up during the previous Tory government it was entirely their fault.
March 10, 2026
The main drivers of inflation are this governments vast increases in taxation, net zero, excessive and increasing red tape, a bloated incompetent government, the costs of open door immigration, the minimum wage increases (another tax grab in effect)… so this government is the main cause.
March 10, 2026
Yes, excuses already lined up.
They will not take any notice of anyone who is outside of their tiny focus/advisory group, so offering ideas, solutions, and/or alternatives, is a complete waste of time
March 10, 2026
It was very strange speech, full of shrill self-congratulation.
Weirdly – it was also rather like watching a Weather Forcast where the forecaster just tells you how nice the weather was last week, whilst completely ignoring the storm blowing outside.
March 10, 2026
Why?
Because it’s all going to their destructive plan; just rather more quickly than anticipated. The war will give them cover to claim that we must join an EU Defence Pact and “it wasn’t us who wrecked the economy” …. it was Big Bad Orange Man.
At the moment, they are doing a great impression of fiddling whilst Rome burns.
March 10, 2026
She won’t do anything because the PM and the entire Cabinet including herself believe they are on the right track: that intermittent renewables will provide us with long term energy security and free us from dependence on fossil fuels. That’s the level of thinking, and every single Labour MP interviewed in the media parrots the same line.
March 10, 2026
Yet another humiliation for the dreadful Nigel Farage. After announcing last Thursday evening at a Westminster event that he would be dining with Trump at the Mar-E-Lago resort on the Friday, apparently Trump failed to show up
Farage flew around 4,500 miles – and never actually met Mr Trump during his visit. Trump ended up staying in Doral, leaving Farage more than an hour’s drive away in Mar-a-Lago and at a loose end.
One of Farage’s flunkeys then said he had never planned on meeting Mr Trump during his visit and had never said he was planning to and even if he was, he certainly would not be discussing the Chagos Islands deal. Yeah, pull the other one
March 10, 2026
You’re really worried by Reform aren’t you ? Not surprised as they’re the one party to pledge to abandon all the Net Zero nonsense.
March 10, 2026
Not so.
March 10, 2026
SG
I”ve searched on the internet to find where Mr Farage actually said he was off to USA for an arranged meeting with the President without success.
Perhaps you can help me.
March 10, 2026
Oh I can confirm that he claimed publicly to be dining with Trump and intended to put Trump right re the Chagos Deal. He said ‘Trump had nearly understood it’.
Farage went to Trumps inauguration too but could not actual attend because he was not invited, unlike Katie Hopkins who had to leave early and saw Farage kicking his heels outside the venue.
Showmanship is a great thing. Not much use in government I suspect.
March 11, 2026
Lynn you do a better job on Farage’s diary and social engagements than the MSM. Ever thought of asking for a job on one of them?
March 11, 2026
Thank you. I try to be accurate. I don’t need a job.
March 11, 2026
Farage says he did not have a pre arranged meeting with the President.
I still have yet to see links to where the the opposite is true.
March 10, 2026
@SG. Who Farage dines with is trivia.
March 11, 2026
Not if it fools people into voting for him.
March 10, 2026
That will soon disappear down some black hole like even more useless windmills, but it appears that it’s not the job of the Chancellor to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, judging by what she has done so far.
Devoted as it is net-0, this government is unwilling to even trade back a little on the goals and insanities of reducing energy usage, in fact the oil crisis following the attacks on Iran will help make sure we do actually use less energy. If they can they will impose that as the norm for us all.
This socialist government is not one for turning, unless of course the backbenchers see their seats in trouble, but even they would face a brick wall to get red Ed to scale down his destruction.
March 10, 2026
We were in big trouble before the Gulf war. All the oil & gas crisis is really going to do, is rapidly bring forward the problems we were already facing. Net Zero was having exactly the same effect and this will now be amplified and accelerated.
However, all that now follows will be blamed by this useless mob on Trump and the Iranian conflict. It is the perfect alibi foR them. Even the May elections may be slightly better for Labour, as they will claim to have resisted an “illegal war” and many gullible, well meaning people will see dithering and indecision as some sort of moral stand.
March 10, 2026
The thirsty man in the desert will drink the sand.
We have tried Conservative socialism and now Labour socialism and both have proved that if you keep giving money away to your mates and to your constituency then prices rise and taxes need to be high to collect the giveaways.
At the next general election the contributors will start to look for more extreme solutions and the takers (who will feel they are not getting enough) will also look for more extreme solutions.
We need a government that spends judiciously on education, law and order and defence – reigns in spending on health and foreign interventions and massively curbs the welfare budget.
In this situation reducing spending would allow the government to reduce VAT and duty on gas and electricity thus cushioning the blow. As they spend so much they can’t afford to reduce their percentage take.
We have no army because the money has been spent on welfare recipients the infirm and housing immigrants. These are the choices the last two governments (at least) have taken.
March 10, 2026
It would indeed help if the government cancelled all their proposed extra payments to foreign governments and the EU over Chagos re set, steel compensation, and the extra payments to illegal migrants the Home Secretary has proposed… and to scrap net zero, fire all the state sector workers who do no good and often do huge net harm (release them for real jobs), restrict benefits payments to those genuinely unable to work… a bonfire of red tape and to reverse all Labour & Reeves’s doom loop lunacy.
March 10, 2026
Trump is sending Aid direct to Foreign Governments and cutting out the NGOs.
We should follow suit.
March 10, 2026
Agree ….better still let them look after themselves unless its an emergency
March 11, 2026
I suspect US Foreign Aid will be targeted and receipts will be required.
March 10, 2026
“respond to the energy crisis” It is not in this Parliaments and its selected Governments ‘Plan’ to do what is right for the UK an its people, nothing must get in the way of destruction.
We all know this is petty malicious damage on the back of ideology lacks commonsense. Our complaints and the pointing out of errors are in fact badges of honour to be worn by Parliament and its MPs that the ‘Plan’ is working. Just 3 years to complete the job!
March 10, 2026
But reality and Socialism have never been on the same page so I cannot find the situation in any way surprising.
March 10, 2026
When the darling of green energy Octopus publicly declares that Britain is staring down the barrel of loss of oil and gas sovereignty and states we need to open up the North Sea it’s deadly serious.
But it falls tone deaf ears to our treacherous, self serving nincompoops!
March 11, 2026
We need the Straits of Hormuz closed and the Druzhba pipeline turned off so we can test the massive ‘renewable’ investment.
If there is no leckie, the people might revolt.
Exactly what is required to reverse the madness.
I see Van Der Leyen is regretting the closure of all the nuclear plants, calling flor the EU ‘to lead the world in nuclear energy…’
She has the brass neck to stand and lecture as though it was not the European Elistist’s fault in the first place.
I’m beginning to think these people are psychopaths.
March 10, 2026
The government’s (well the Civil Service’s) response is to ramp up our renewable energy program and close down our own oil and gas extraction. See the SoS for DESNZ statement to the HoC on 10/02/2026. A policy they know full well will fail because renewables are parasitic energy which cannot operate without fossil fuels. The ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) for renewables are too low to be sustainable and we can only be using them currently because they are built in China who are using fossil fuels for manufacture as well as using cheap, possibly slave, labour and ignoring environmental degradation. Even the concrete for fixed offshore wind is shipped from China. They also know that renewables are unnecessary as adding more CO2 to the atmosphere causes little, if any additional GHG warming. Even the Green Party appear to have given up for now the false CAGW climate crisis and its “solution” Net Zero now that they seem to have found other, more important causes to sabotage the West’s social stability and security
March 10, 2026
John, your question re lack of energy policy response from the chancellor can be answered very simply.
The Chancellor or indeed the entire Labour government do not see a shortage of energy or an increase in the base price of energy as undesirable.
They see restricting energy availability either through scarcity or through price or both as a positive and consider it part of their Net Zero policy.
For the zealots determined to destroy the UK manufacturing base and thus destroy the UKs defence capability energy is the most direct and effective tool in their box to achieve their stated aims.
Labour has done all in its brief 18months in office to stall growth and to destroy jobs. This energy crisis looming ahead of us is perfect from their perspective. They will be able to blame the ongoing shut down of the UK on external forces.
The old favourite Labour get out “nothing to do with us gov” will be fully deployed.
NB. Good to see Starmer has prioritised picking up more migrants displaced by the middle east conflict with news we will send a large rescue vessel from Gibraltar as our first and prime duty to the conflict. This will happen before any capital ship is deployed to the troubled area of the Med. That is how dysfunctional this Labour Government is.
March 10, 2026
The Spring Statement was a joke by a deluded Chancellor. Even when reality slaps her in ther face she refuses to change course. In a private enterprise, Reeves would have been sacked by now for incompetence. But sadly, we have a jelly-bean PM who also refuses to face reality.
The Media don’t help by whipping up hysteria about fuel prices and other fuel-related costs.
How embarrassing that France and Greece have ships defending Cyprus, and ours are in dock! Our stupid PM gives millions to Ukraine to fight Russia, which is probably the right thing to do, but then takes his eye off the ball
when Trump builds up his firepower to sort out Iran.
March 10, 2026
I’d add that we should normalise relations with Russia, if they allow us. A big supplier of hydrocarbons.
March 11, 2026
And much more… and they want a pan European Security Treaty (which includes them of course).
What is not to like?
Trump and Putin obviously working together re Iran and possibly Ukraine, but under the radar. Saying the ‘right’ things publicly so they don’t each get ousted, but saving the world.
Pity I will not live to read the contemporary documents.
March 10, 2026
I note that Brearley, co-author of the Climate Change Act is moving from OFGEM to Permanent Secretary at DESNZ. Pocklington moved to the MoD where evidently he feels at home amid the mess there. This tightens Miliband’s Net Zero grip on policy. I would bet Chris Stark, ex Climate Change Committee, gets given the OFGEM gig.
March 10, 2026
We need to remember that government policy has resulted in 3 refinery closures in short order: Grangemouth, Lindsey and Fawley. This leaves us dangerously exposed to sourcing product imports, particularly for diesel, jet and kerosene. Already much of that supply had been coming from Kuwait, Saudi and the UAE, including via break bulk of large shipments in Rotterdam and Antwerp. There are no easy substitutes.
The government should act to keep refinery capacity open instead of taxing it into closure. Crude is much more fungible: we can run crude from a wide variety of sources if we have to.
March 10, 2026
Agreed. And I would rather we were dependent upon several petrostates from around the world and including the UKCS than a single state our security services describe as “hostile”.
March 10, 2026
The problem is caused by the way the Net Zero legal target is defined.
If we utilise our own energy from our own resources any CO2 created is added to the UK’s total.
However, if we import energy the CO2 created is added to the CO2 totals of the importing nations.
So if we imported all our energy we would be zero CO2.
Hilarious.
March 11, 2026
The other issue is that we are not being out produced in armaments by Israel.
March 10, 2026
309 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK 9th March 2026 …
March 11, 2026
I watched P.M.’s Q.T. earlier today. The Conservative leader immediately asked about the cost of fuel, but Starmer had his own agenda ready and banged on instead about the Tory stance on the war. Like Basil Fawlty after he had taken a knock on the head, the P.M. ranted on and on about the war. It was regardless of K.B.’s questions. At one point the Speaker gently suggested a return to P.M.’s questions, but shouldn’t he be firmer about it? The P.M. is choosing his own content to discuss, whereas, traditionally, the session has been for questions to the P.M.