The Telegraph: Putin’s surprise victory could destroy the “free world”
The Telegraph published an article by, Alistair Heath, entitled “Putin achieved a surprise victory that could destroy the free world,” in reference to the energy war waged by the Kremlin and pushing Europe and Britain towards economic collapse and socialism.
Heath said Britain now risks falling into Vladimir Putin’s trap.
His economic suicide war on the West will eventually destroy him and his cohorts, but it has begun to inflict enormous and lasting damage to the Western way of life.
He warned that Britain risks ending up in extreme poverty, civil disobedience, a new socialist government by next year, its disintegration, the trend towards nationalization and the application of pricing and income policies, punitive taxes on wealth, and ultimately a complete economic and financial collapse and resort to the rescue of the International Monetary Fund .
He noted that the situation in the European Union is worse.
The writer emphasized that his article is not a plea for peace, or a disregard for the situation after the illegal invasion of Ukraine by a brutal regime.
Britain was, and still is, morally right to support Ukraine in a carefully considered way.
But this is a call for an economic counterattack, directed at Liz Truss, the incoming prime minister, to tackle Putin’s economic and energy war head-on.
The Heath argues that immediate intervention is inevitable, but must be designed to avoid accelerating Britain’s transition to demagoguery, welfare, and socialist central planning.
And he warns that the wrong response for so little has been done, or because the wrong solutions were chosen, will only reinforce Putin’s master plan to cripple the West.
Household energy and vehicle fuel costs will jump from 4.5% of household spending in early 2021 to about 13.4% by April next year.
Households could face a rise in energy costs of 167 billion pounds, or 7% of gross domestic product, making total spending 231 billion pounds, more than government spending on health, before the damage to businesses is factored in.
The only increase consumers’ face is more than the defense and education budgets.
This equates to a depression pattern shock.
Wage increases will protect some workers at the expense of investors, but unless energy prices fall again our national standards of living will fall dramatically.
The state can borrow to cushion the blow, and reduce future consumption to support current living standards, but our impoverishment cannot be eliminated.
