Power Cut

In the 1970s, middle-aged people had often grown up without reliable, if any, domestic electricity, and had all been through the War. They therefore had candles in the house as a matter of course. But these days, a lot of people probably do not even have matches.

We are all going to be needing such items, yet in 1978, the then Energy Secretary, Tony Benn, contended without opposition that Britain was one year away from self-sufficiency in energy.

Ask yourself what happened to this country that still stands on coal, this country surrounded by sea that is itself rich in oil and gas, this country where the wind blows a lot and where the Sun shines quite intensely from time to time, this country that pioneered nuclear power.

While we starved and shivered in the dark, expect polio, monkeybox, and the still rampant Covid-19 to provide Liz Truss, who had never had a fixed penalty notice, with the pretext to impose another lockdown while she tidied up outlawing strikes to match the ban on protests that had already come into effect.

Expect that to be a two Christmases lockdown. If there is going to be a recession for five quarters, then we are all going to have to be forced to stay at home for five quarters. Forever thereafter, that will be how they dealt with extreme economic distress. A public health emergency can always be found. And it will be.

As for the Labour Party, it is setting its future pattern by offering each of our households £46 to the Conservatives' £56. If you need to do so, then save yourself £53, seven pounds more than Labour is dangling before you, by cancelling your membership of the Labour Party, which will give enthusiastic support to Truss's lockdown in eager anticipation of pulling the same trick in future. On her strike ban, it will abstain, or even if it went through the motions of voting against, then it would never have any policy of repeal.