Patience will be needed by public again

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The country is far from firing on all cylinders right now

uge queues formed outside petrol stations across Courier Country yesterday. Assurances by politicians that panic buying was not necessary and there is enough fuel to go around clearly fell on deaf ears.

UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps was sent out to get ahead of the unfolding crisis but there was little evidence of his hoped-for calming influence on forecourts around the country.

It seemed that any public pronouncement with the phrase “panic buying” in it simply fuelled the fire, no matter that the central message was “do not” panic buy as there was no need to follow such a course of action.

However, the public’s jumpiness over fuel may be understandable when put into a wider context of a country that is far from firing on all cylinders right now.

Next weekend the hugely expensive furlough scheme, which underpinned the UK economy throughout the worst of Covid and kept many people in work, will come to a close, bringing greater uncertainty to the labour market.

The £20 Universal Credit uplift that has helped families in hardship is also to be withdrawn in short order.

And there remain serious question marks over food supply vulnerabilities in the run-up to Christmas, the ability to move goods around the country as a result of a serious HGV driver shortage and the impact on individual households of soaring wholesale gas prices.

Given those weighty problems – and questions marks over whether they can be resolved swiftly given the global nature of some of the issues – it is perhaps not surprising that panic can be triggered more easily than in more regular periods.

But stocking up still does not make sense when there is enough to go around.

Patience – that virtue which has been required so often during Covid – is needed once more.