There seems to be a strange modern phenomenon that appears to strike governments like Ramsay Hunt syndrome and causes a kind of institutional paralysis. Rather like a deer caught in the headlights, it doesn’t know what to do and does nothing.

That deer is not frozen because it’s stupid, but because its brain is overloaded by an overwhelming number of conflicting thoughts. Flee? freeze? fight? Left? Right? Ooooh, what’s the pretty light? Splat?

By the time it works out, it’s in imminent danger, it’s too late, and it’s hit by some trucker. It knew it was in danger. It knew it should do something, it just didn’t know what, and that indecision got it killed.

So what does Sir Keir Starmer have in common with Bambi?

His government knows it’s in danger. The crisis is visible, the clock is ticking, and everyone watching can see the truck barrelling down on them.

But instead of picking a direction. Indeed, any direction. The political will keeps cycling through the options until it’s too late, and the impact decides the direction of travel for them.

In this case, it’s not some trucker, which is good since, given the current fuel crisis, the only way it’s moving is downhill, and that’s the point, fuel crisis, yes fuel crisis darling. The one where diesel supplies are drying up, fuel costs are climbing, and the haulage industry is waving from the roadside. One that seems to have our current government doing more than a passing impression of that deer.

That’s why I’ve got a terrible sense of déjà vu, like I’ve seen this disaster movie before; it all seems so familiar, same plot, same script, different actors. Just when you thought it was safe…

Yep, this all reminds me of the COVID crisis. Not the lockdown. But just as the curtains were going up, the government was dithering over whether to do something or not.

While the exact number is almost impossible to calculate, government indecision over COVID and the lockdown did cost somewhere in the region of tens of thousands of lives, but what we can say with certainty is that it killed people. I fear it will be the same with the fuel crisis.

While the shock of the fuel crisis will be felt in our wallets, the real impact will be on our shelves. It’s an inconvenient truth that diesel is the real lifeblood of this country.

It’s all very well having a heatpump in the back garden and solar panels on the roof, driving an 80 grand electric car and boasting how you have lowered your carbon footprint, if you forget that your quinoa was delivered to the health food store in a fucking great big, diesel guzzling, smoke-belching truck.

Ok, I admit it’s not your fault, for that lies at the feet of the supermarkets and their just-in-time model. The system, where stock is held at central distribution nodes and is sent to local stores before they run out, when it works, it saves money and makes the system much more efficient.

When it doesn’t, there is no quinoa on the shelves. Or toilet paper, beans, cheesy peas, and bread. A shock to the fuel system is a shock to the country’s ability to feed the nation.

Now, as someone who witnessed the great toilet paper riots of South Norwood firsthand – come on, you must have seen the clip on YouTube, it was filmed in my local Aldi. I’m under no illusions about what a genuine food shortage would do for social cohesion. Blitz spirit, my arse.

I can joke and I will, for you will need a sense of humour when the rioting starts, but let’s be honest, it’s not funny when it happens to you. It’s no joke, the idea of food shortages and blackouts is truly terrifying. But this is not the plot of some B-movie.

It could happen, it might happen, but if it does, it won’t be on the streets of Knightsbridge or Fitzrovia, nor will it occur in Chipping Norton or Wilmslow. The top tier of society is protected. Insulated by wealth, and whilst not having pantries overflowing with food, they have pantries and that says enough on its own.

Just like COVID, the real shock of any fuel crisis will be borne on the shoulders of those who can bear it the least. The poor. Those on benefits who live week to week. Those for whom the notion of an organic free-range chicken is as abstract as a Lamborghini Urus and about as affordable.

If we are not careful, the 2026 fuel crisis will be something that plays out on the TV screens of little England as the chattering classes look on while inner cities burn and Kevin from Bideford posts his indignation on the Daily Mail.

By the time the middle classes are down to their last bottle of balsamic vinegar or have decided that the cheeky cooking red wine is OK to drink, the streets of Croydon and Hackney will be ablaze.

While the haves look on in horror and deign to condescend, they kid themselves they would never do that. Yet the only ones they are fooling are themselves. They would do the same if they suddenly found themselves the have-nots.

The only thing they have lost is the compassion to put themselves in the same place, but that’s the thing about wealth: you soon forget what it’s like to be poor. All the while, the government is frozen like that poor deer.

Perhaps it’s just a question of viewpoint, and while I might be the very definition of the establishment, a journalist on a newspaper based in the City, I have not forgotten what it is like to be poor; indeed, I still am.

The world looks very different when you are looking up at wealth from the lowly viewpoint of poverty, and whilst I’m not in poverty, neither am I rich. However, from that lofty vantage point, the world looks very different; mountains become molehills. Fine philosophy indeed, but try telling that to someone who has queued for hours at the food bank for a tin of beans.

It’s just that I get no sense that this government has any idea what is coming down the road, has not considered how the fuel crisis will affect those on low incomes, and what to do when it does.

Like that deer, the current Labour government is paralysed by fear, terrified that in helping the poor it will shoot itself in the foot, running scared of policies that it feels would lose votes, when it should be concerned with losing lives.

I fully accept that I’m closer to being a Marxist than I ever will be to Reform or the Tories, but that does not make me blind or stupid. The problem is that when Bambi dies, it does not die alone. And in doing so, it hands Nigel Farage the keys to the trucking truck.