A war and maybe an unprecedented depression: it’s Trump’s mania, but now all of us will pay the price | Polly Toynbee

Nothing has changed. Yet. But we stand on the edge of inevitable economic cataclysm, such as not seen in our lifetimes. It’s an odd, hold-your-breath moment, waiting for what the International Energy Agency (IEA) says is now certain to happen: an energy crisis so critical it will be the equivalent of the two oil crises in 1973 and 1979 and Russia’s 2022 full invasion of Ukraine, put together.
The IEA says it’s already too late to prevent this impending energy crisis. President Donald Trump has swerved the Armageddon destruction of oil and gas facilities threatening the entire Middle East, but too late. The deep recession, probably depression, that his war has caused is heading around the globe. Britain will be hard hit.
Trump calls on the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their religious dictatorship. The rest of the world is willing the American people to rise up – progressives, Magas and stock marketeers alike – against their wildly out-of-control president who has no exit strategy because he never had an entry purpose. This world-changing conflagration will cost his citizens dear and they need to frighten him out of war: unpopularity is all he fears.
Old allies will never again trust the US after its people elected not once but twice this most unfit, mindlessly dangerous man. “Leader of the free world”? We will never view US presidents that way again, after Trump’s preference for Putin, lifting sanctions on Russian oil, betraying Ukraine, detesting Europe and trashing all the international order it stands for. The attorney general, Richard Hermer’s, speech this evening will stand up for law against Trumpian lawlessness.
Cobra met on Monday to plan energy supplies, with Starmer promising to to pull “every lever” to rescue living costs. That means acting on IEA warnings to countries to “shelter consumers from the impacts of this crisis”. They list basic fuel-saving action: cut speed limits (they were 50mph on all UK roads in the 1973 crisis), share cars, don’t fly frivolously, avoid travel, use public transport, work from home, preserve gas and cook with electricity. The IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, warns “the impacts on energy markets and economies are set to become more and more severe”.
Remember the powerful effect of the blockade of oil refineries amid the UK fuel protests in 2000. Cars queued for hours; panic-buying causing up to 3,000 petrol stations to run dry; supermarket shelves emptied; hospitals were on emergency footing and schools closed. But those blockades only lasted a week.
How bitter that this economy-killing war ignited just as the chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spring statement reported a few green shoots of growth. Instead, due to the unchecked megalomania of one man, the cost of living will soar, inflation and unemployment, too, and rationing measures won’t be popular. Money must be found to ease extreme suffering, but with bond markets in no mind to allow borrowing for spending, taxes will have to rise in extremis. Talking to several economists, they echoed Prof Tony Travers of the LSE’s view that this crisis will force Labour’s manifesto to be torn up and taxes to rise.
Governments at the helm are ejected after crises, blamed regardless, even when they have done well: Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling did more to “save the world” than anyone amid the 2008 financial crisis, but voters never do gratitude. Edward Heath was ejected after the three-day week’s cold, dark evenings, no TV, and a candle shortage. The 1973 oil crisis left few western leaders surviving their next election. Few stayed in power after Covid, either.
Labour and its leader were already sunk so low that the war and Starmer’s handling of it may do them a little good. Abuse from Trump is a badge of honour, as the president posted an anti-Starmer Saturday Night Live UK sketch (not a good one, missed its mark by miles), shortly before the two leaders spoke on the phone about the strait of Hormuz. Cowardly, weak, woke, a loser, disappointing, too late to the fight and trashing British troops in Afghanistan (drawing a stern rebuke), Trump’s insults bounce off Starmer. The playground taunts do him good, reminding Britain’s Trump-loathing voters how the UK is keeping out of this war. Tony Blair’s complaint that Starmer failed to join the fight was helpful, showing how well Starmer did in refusing to reprise the Iraq fiasco: if he is “no Churchill”, mercifully he is no Blair, either.
Out with Labour canvassers in Lambeth, south London, last week, a borough threatened by the Greens, I was reminded that there are still solid Labour voters, often reported as extinct. London is crucial, as Labour holds 59 out of its 75 Westminster seats, but is expected to lose most of the 21 out of 32 councils it holds. Starmer’s Camden is threatened.
I listened to Green switchers and “never Keir again” voters, but there is a lot of softness and indecision between the two parties. Whistling in the dark, the impressive squad of 20 Labour canvassers mocked the Greens for leaflets all about Gaza, not about the climate or the economy, noting their lack of feet on the doorstep, expecting Zack Polanski to come under more unfavourable scrutiny. But Labour is destined to lose squadrons of councillors, vital foot-soldiers for the general election.
Starmer’s judgment day is pencilled in for 7 May. There will be paroxysms of panic from hundreds of MPs who see the ground vanishing beneath their seats. But I sense less certainty on instant regime change. Is it wise to sack a leader mid-war and during an economic crisis? They are of very different opinions depending on the seat. So who would they choose? There is no gathering around anyone. Andy Burnham isn’t there yet. (Though the NEC should note a Britain Predicts poll of Gorton and Denton before the byelection shows Burnham could have won, had Starmer not blocked him.)
Listening to mostly left-leaners in Lambeth gives a good steer for how Labour can win them. Brexit still hurts, they are desperate to rejoin, or near as dammit. Speak up louder, as John Major did in a speech last year, showing how Brexit has stripped £100bn a year from UK GDP: £40bn of that would be flowing in tax to the Treasury. Think what £40bn would do to ease us through this coming storm. Reeves went further than before on Europe in her Mais lecture: she needs to crash through the petty barriers, such as university tuition fees, to start to rescue what was lost.
Public disgust at Trump is Starmer’s other strong card. But it may need a new leader to signal a Labour change of direction loudly enough, dropping the worst of its Reform-friendly immigration plans. It may take a new leader to use this crisis to abandon the manifesto albatross and its fiscal straitjacket. Here’s one very small comfort: as Reform slips some five percentage points in the polls, it has replaced Labour as the most hated party.
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Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist