Tinfoil Hat Time: British Media Accuses Putin of ‘Pushing UK, Europe Toward Socialism’

Europe is reeling from a self-inflicted inflation and energy crisis after scaling back purchases of Russian oil, gas, coal, and electricity in a bid to “punish” Moscow for its military operation in Ukraine. Russia has expressed readiness to sign new gas contracts with “unfriendly” European nations, on the condition that payments be made in rubles.

Russia’s “kamikaze energy war” against the European Union and Britain is pushing Brussels and London into “economic meltdown and socialism,” and starting to “inflict immense permanent damage on the Western way of life,” British business journalist and commentator Allister Heath has argued.

In an op-ed comment for The Telegraph on Wednesday, Heath suggested that Britain risks “ending up with calamitous poverty, civil disobedience, a new socialist government by next year, a break-up of the UK, nationalizations, price and incomes policies, punitive wealth taxes and eventually a complete economic and financial meltdown and IMF bailout.”

Stressing that his solution was not “pacifism” or any form of negotiation with Moscow, Heath instead called on Tory leadership frontrunner and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to begin an “economic counter-offensive” and to “tackle [Vladimir] Putin’s economic and energy war head-on.”

Instead of “advanc[ing] Putin’s masterplan to cripple the West” by drifting toward “demagoguery, welfarism and socialist central planning,” Britain must find ways to ensure “cheap and plentiful energy” supplies, which are “essential to our consumerist societies,” the business journalist argued.

“There was little the West could do other than rely on hostile OPEC nations in the 1970s, the last time an energy war almost destroyed us; but it was an unforgivable error for Europe to become so reliant on Russian supplies, and to fail so miserably to increase domestic energy production. The French even allowed their nuclear plants to break down,” Heath lamented. “A toxic brew of net zero ideology, deep hypocrisy about decarbonizing without making the nuclear effort, endemic nimbyism, short-termism and state incompetence had radically weakened the West,” he added.

The journalist encouraged Truss to start the “most urgent energy infrastructure program in history while suspending as many green rules as possible,” and to “work visibly with business” to show voters “they are delivering investments under warlike conditions, reducing the pressure for confiscatory windfall taxes.”

Truss, the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest that kicked off after scandal-ridden Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned in July, has reportedly expressed openness to approving new oil and gas drilling in Britain’s sector of the North Sea to try to remedy the current energy crisis. However, energy economists speaking to Sputnik expressed concerns that such measures would not result in any near-term relief, and that only patching up relations with Russia, which produces about 10 percent of the world’s oil and accounts for nearly a quarter of the planet’s reserves of natural gas, would resolve the crisis in the long term.

The energy and inflation crunch has hit the UK particularly hard, with recent polling finding that 23 percent of Britons plan to never turn on their heating this winter, and 11 percent more saying they plan to take out a loan just to pay their energy bills.

This week, UK media reported that 70 percent of the country’s food banks were bracing for a situation in which they would have to turn people away or downsize rations amid surging demand.

Russian energy companies have reoriented exports from Europe and the UK to India, China, and other Asian nations and begun flaring gas output after Brussels and London announced dramatic reductions in dependence on Russian oil, gas, coal, and electricity this past spring and summer. After the rejection of Russian energy began to affect European economies, officials and media started blaming Moscow for the fiasco and accusing Putin of waging a “hybrid energy war” against them.

Moscow has rejected these accusations, suggesting that Europeans were being made to pay for Brussels’ “irrational and absurd” energy policy while US energy companies turn a profit, and calling the EU’s efforts to cut off Russian energy purchases “suicidal.”