THEY say a week is a long time in politics. Yet as we approach the seventh week of this dreadful Tory leadership contest, it will have felt like an eternity for households and businesses across Stirling, Scotland, and indeed the UK, who can see the UK Government asleep at the wheel as these islands drift further towards an autumn and winter of discontent – despair even.

I have spent the last few weeks out and about across Stirling, talking to people and businesses, and the attitude is unanimous: more needs to be done, and we don’t want politics, son, we want action. Energy bills are going to push millions of people UK-wide into real difficulty, and inflation and low wage growth will do the rest. I’m honestly terrified of some of the numbers I am seeing in the forecasts.

And yet, instead of action, we’ve seen Boris Johnson off on holiday, and, like that infamous scene in Clockwork Orange, been forced to watch a Tory leadership circus unfold as domestic and international relationships are put through the shredder in attempts to pander to the Conservative right.

Nicola Sturgeon is awkward? Ignore her – and Scotland with her. Northern Ireland is tricky? Just blame the EU, and when that makes it worse, blame them even more. Is the French president an ally? Well, the current Foreign Secretary isn’t sure. Ruinous, boneheaded stuff that will have real consequence.

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Try sorting out the people- trafficking in the Channel or haulier delays at Dover when the French authorities think you’re a wrong’un.

Energy bills, and the UK’s demonstrably broken energy market, are driving a cost of living crisis, compounded by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the ongoing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic – as well as Brexit. Other European nations are also tackling the first two factors – and to varying degrees the third – and yet, the UK’s inflation is the worst in the G7, and prices are hitting 40-year highs.

Twelve years of austerity and a fairytale belief in the power of free markets has rendered our communities and public services vulnerable to economic shocks. And far from “fixing the roof whilst the sun was shining”, Tory austerity has simply sold off the family silver and stripped back the state to the bone to a point where there isn’t much resilience in the system.

Energy-rich Scotland has been left deeply exposed by the macroeconomic failings of successive UK Governments, and unless we see major changes in UK Government policy (or, pending independence, the devolution of the powers and budgets for Scotland to act unilaterally), it’s the poorest in our society who’ll bear the brunt of those failures.

And not just the poor – businesses and industry are vulnerable to surging energy prices, with no equivalent of the domestic energy price-cap in place. We’ve seen endless warnings of catastrophe from industry and sector bodies, who predict ruin if swift action isn’t taken. Even yesterday, I heard of another local business, this time in Plean just outside Stirling, shutting up shop because the numbers are just too big. Our high streets and city centres are working through a still fragile recovery from the pandemic – they cannot face the astronomical energy costs demanded by our badly broken energy market.

And this is to say nothing of public authorities, local authorities, the police, fire and rescue services, universities, colleges and all the others trying to calculate how much rising energy costs will hit stretched public budgets already struggling with (entirely justifiable) wage demands. But households, particularly those on low incomes, young families and pensioners, are in real trouble now.

The dreadful choice between heating and eating may indeed end up as no choice at all as energy costs rise. Some estimates predict almost one-third of Scots will be in extreme fuel poverty by January 2023 if the UK Government doesn’t get a grip – and fast.

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I and SNP colleagues have proposed numerous solutions, thus far without response from the here today gone tomorrow Ministers of the UK Government. Firstly, the price cap rise must be cancelled, with the UK Government and energy companies working together to find a way of funding this freeze over a longer period of time. The SNP are also supportive of a broad windfall tax on excessive profits, the uprating of social security payments, and fundamental reform of the energy market.

External shocks and events will always shape the politics of the day, but the unarguable fact that energy-rich Scotland has had an energy crisis foisted upon it by Westminster mismanagement is flatly obscene. But the response of the state and policymakers to those challenges remains within the grasp of civic society, and we will all of us need to do what we can.

The people of Scotland will not accept denials and inaction as we face a crisis made worse by the UK’s own internal failings.