Rising energy bills are a price worth paying to stop Putin

Nato countries are being careful not to do anything that Russia could claim is an act of war. Just look at the reluctance from the US to provide Ukraine with Polish fighter jets. Yet Britain and other Nato members are involved in a huge effort to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine through supplying Ukraine with weapons and imposing financial pressure on Moscow. Russia, a G20 country, has been severed from the world economy. It has now surpassed Iran as the most sanctioned country on Earth and it is beginning to occupy a similar economic position.

The speed with which Russia has been hit by these economic measures has been a display of the West’s financial power. Yet western politicians now have to rally their publics to accept the cost of the sanctions. If these measures are to act as an effective form of deterrence in the future, then the free world will have to show that it is prepared to endure the economic pain that goes with them. Robert Jenrick, the 40-year-old former secretary of state for housing, this week warned voters that this could be ‘the most difficult economic year that we’ve seen in our lifetime’.

Even before the war began, energy prices were rising – a result of a lack of investment in the sector combined with the consequences of turning the world economy on and off again during the Covid pandemic. But sanctions and the possibility of either Russia imposing an oil and gas embargo, or an embargo being imposed by the West (the sanctions are currently designed to exempt oil and gas), have sent prices soaring.

Energy providers are already warning that the cap on domestic bills may rise to £3,000 come October. It is hard to see how so large an increase would not lead to a recession given the squeeze it would exert on household budgets.