The government has announced it will end imports of Russian diesel and jet fuel by New Year’s Eve, a move hailed as a ‘major sovereignty push’. One might ask: what took so long? For months, we have been funding the Kremlin’s war machine through our fuel bills, a fact that should have been treated as an emergency, not a bureaucratic inconvenience.
The decision is welcome, but it reeks of the same half-heartedness that has characterised this government’s approach to the crisis. We are finally turning off the tap, but only after the bath has overflowed. This is not a bold declaration of independence; it is a reluctant admission that our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons was both morally and strategically bankrupt.
The real question is whether we have the infrastructure and will to replace these imports with domestic alternatives, or whether we will simply swap one dependency for another. If history teaches us anything, it is that empires crumble not when they are attacked, but when they become too weak to sustain their own existence. Britain’s sovereignty push is a step in the right direction, but it is a small step.
The path ahead is long, and the hour is late.
