Unethical behaviour by politicians and corporations has led to endemic levels of corruption within Britain. Is it, therefore, any surprise to the average person on the street that Britain’s petrol retailers now stand accused of profiteering from the energy crisis having failed almost unilaterally to pass on half of Rishi Sunak’s 5p fuel duty cut.

Research by the RAC found that retailers were taking, on average, 2p more in profit per litre of fuel sold than they did before the chancellor reduced duty in March.

As diesel prices hit record highs and motorists pumping three and a half billion litres of fuel a month into their vehicles, the research suggests that supermarkets and other petrol retailers may be making extra profits of about £7 million a month.

It is reasonable to could argue that retailers were stealing a very big chunk of a tax deduction. Tory MPs facing a torrent of calls to do more about the cost of living crisis than they have then called for a regulator to protect consumers from petrol retailers.

The inflationary pressures witnessed so far this year have now caused the Bank of England governor to warn of ‘apocalyptic food price rises, Ofgem – the energy regulator to propose reviewing the price cap four times a year (as opposed to twice) and the chancellor to admit that the economy was in fact, in worse shape than previously admitted.

At The Economic Times, we warned months before the ONS, Bank of England and the government did that the economy was going to spiral, that a recession was coming this year and that stagflation was the likely outcome for 2023. All of these forecasts are now being predicted by the ONS and BoE.

This coming winter will see the government being forced to step up efforts to protect the bottom half of households from this economic spiral and inflationary spike.