The Chancellor has lost her voice or been silenced. She popped up to present the OBR's latest forecast, making no comment on it and offering no policies to correct the obvious problems. The forecast assumed there would be no war in the Middle East and that oil prices would stay down.
Many of us at the time said it was already out of date. She needed to adjust the forecast for a likely conflict with Iran, but she didn't.
More importantly, she should have taken action to tackle the excessive deficit, inflation which was still too high, our import dependence for energy and surging unemployment. If only. These were problems anyway, with or without an oil crisis.
So what should she do now? She should apologise for presenting such a wrong forecast, and update Parliament and people on what she now thinks will happen to inflation and unemployment with oil almost twice the level she and the OBR predicted a few weeks ago. She needs to work with the PM and Energy Minister on how to contain high and rising energy prices, and how to make big changes to our energy policy to reduce import dependence and the high costs of unreliable renewables.
Fifty-five per cent of the cost of diesel and petrol at the pumps is tax. She should reduce the rates while high oil prices last. She should have further discussions with our domestic oil and gas industry and ask them to maximise output now, offering tax reductions to foster more output.
She should waive VAT on domestic fuel all the time gas prices are elevated. She should cut oil and gas taxes generally to encourage the industry to invest more in exploration and expanded production.
The bans on new oil and gas should be ended.
She should be alarmed by the way the costs of UK borrowing have gone up again, putting pressure on mortgage holders and sending the government's shockingly high interest bill even higher.
She should adopt the Conservative proposals for spending reductions, led by action to control the benefits bill. She could usefully add not paying money to Mauritius for the dreadful giveaway deal, not paying money to the EU for a reset and not paying huge sums for needless Bank of England losses.
The Chancellor has either been muted or silenced. Either way, we are in serious trouble - John Redwood | Getty Images
She should work with the Home Secretary to bring the number of illegal migrants well down, instead of signing off on large sums to them as a reward for entry, to try to get some to leave again.
She should get the Government to reintroduce the law they repealed to prevent illegal entrants from claiming asylum once here. GB News has highlighted so much waste and needless expenditure, which she should tackle.
Dear energy lies behind so many recent industrial closures. It squeezes the living standards of people on lower incomes. The Chancellor needs to use this crisis to get a change of policy out of a weak Prime Minister and the net zero fanatic, the Energy Secretary. UK energy policy destroys jobs, prevents and deters investment in oil and gas, closes factories and keeps consumers hard up.
The UK needs additional and new gas-fired power stations, which still offer the cheapest reliable power, and more UK-produced gas.
These are medium-term solutions. Announcing them now would help, both by getting on with providing more capacity in due course and showing markets the UK will add to supply as well as to demand in the years ahead.
Now is not the time for a shy, hesitant, silenced Chancellor.
So far, she has put unemployment up, inflation up, and borrowing up. Markets are now about to make this all worse for her - and us - as she did not prepare for an energy crisis. She needs to tell the PM and Energy Secretary that the UK's needs must come first.
That means Government action to slash the outrageously high energy taxes at a time of rising prices, and action to bring borrowing under control by tackling the benefits bill and the illegal migrant problem.
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