The UK is already in a de facto recession – only the fiddling of the data to count GP appointments as a value-adding activity led to a paltry 0.5 percent GDP growth in May.  Discretionary spending has already plummeted, and it is only a matter of time before we see widespread business failures and debt defaults.  Indeed, this is likely to be one reason why Britain is experiencing a wave of strikes – provoking a strike to save on energy costs and the wage bill was a common response to inflation in the 1970s and is likely to be one of the few similarities today (the big difference being that we no longer have nationalised industries, so nobody is going to give in to workers’ demands).

Internationally, there is a global dollar shortage – which the Federal Reserve is exacerbating – which threatens a sovereign debt implosion beginning with developing economies dependent upon a single commodity for foreign exchange, but eventually dragging down any economy which trades in dollars…  which brings us to the ill-advised sanctions salad imposed on Russia and China in response to the war in Ukraine.  This has brought forward the establishment of an alternative BRICS currency system which will cover around a third of global trade, and in the process crush the economies of Europe.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Russia seems to be finally responding by halting its supply of gas to Europe, causing capital flight and industrial closures – including of the wind turbine industry which is supposed to save the day – across the continent.

In Britain, the “curse of oil” means that the unfolding collapse will be all the harder – since the 1980s, Britain’s neoliberal governments have used oil and gas revenues to underwrite the explosion of debt – and profits for the few – generated in the City of London…

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