Desperate times call for desperate measures. The UK has rightly supported Ukraine’s cause in its war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Today’s soaring gas prices are as much a weapon in Putin’s fight as missiles directed at Ukraine and, like them, they will kill. It would be a crime and a folly to let the domestic costs of the war fall disproportionately on the least well off. Solidarity in sharing these burdens is obligatory. So, too, is willingness to shed shibboleths. In wartime, markets are not sacrosanct. Price controls, even rationing, must be on the table.

The price of natural gas is nearly 5 times what it was a year ago. The result is a distributional shock, a terms of trade shock (since the UK is a big net importer of gas), an overall price shock, with inflation likely to hit 20 per cent, and a contractionary shock to gross domestic product.

The distributional shock is the most important. According to ING, even with the measures already taken by the government, the cost of energy could rise from 12 per cent of household disposable income for the lowest decile in 2021 to 41 per cent between October 2022 and September 2023. Even at the sixth decile it could go from 4 to 14 per cent of disposable income. This would be a massive (and massively unequal) squeeze on people’s real incomes. According to the Resolution Foundation, the UK is set to experience the largest two-year decline in median non-pensioner real disposable income after housing costs in 100 years.