What price a fuel duty stabiliser?

Last we heard, the government was considering what it should, and could, do to suppress rising fuel prices. I wonder whether they have now pencilled something into March’s Red Book. You see, after a swell of speculative fear triggered by events in the Middle East, the cost of oil is going up, up, up. Brent Crude touched $120 a barrel yesterday, the highest price since August 2008, although it eventually settled to around $111. Some observers predict it will soon exceed the previous record price of $150.

Naturally, this threatens to unstitch the delicate fabric of the global economy – drastically rising oil prices could bring pervasive stagflation in their wake. But there are also more parochial concerns, not least what all this means for motorists. Already, the rising cost of oil is seeping into the prices that people pay at the petrol pumps.