Britain’s energy policy has hit a brick wall called ‘the real world’. Andy Maciver argues that the war in Iran means we need to invoke the ‘spirit of Covid’, where we think the unthinkable and do the undoable.

I can’t muster too many good memories from Covid. It was a dismal couple of years and the consequences are still with us. The prolonged closure of schools (much longer than in other countries) may yet be seen as the most consequential public policy mistake of our time. Taxpayers are still servicing the eye-watering government debt which was taken on, and we likely will be for the rest of our lives. And of course, on a human level, there cannot be many of us who do not know of someone - perhaps someone close - who died prematurely from Covid or something associated with Covid.

So, it is a time to forget. Except for one thing; it showed that the British and Scottish governments have the ability to think the unthinkable and do the undoable, and do so quickly. They have the ability to create a blank sheet of paper from a tablet of stone when the situation really, really demands it. That spirit of Covid can be bottled and re-deployed when a situation presents itself which is serious enough to demand something truly radical.

That situation is now upon us in the form of energy bills, and the pervasive role they play in the worsening cost-of-living crisis experienced by people in this country. When we hear observers say “Britain has the highest energy prices in the world”, this is not a piece of throwaway rhetoric. It is true. Measured against other members of the International Energy Agency of developed countries, and against EU countries, we have the highest industrial........

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