Is this a nightmare or have PBP-S finally gone full Liz Truss?

Paul Murphy has been banging the drum for an apparently long-standing People Before Profit-Solidarity policy the last few days: a price cap on petrol and diesel. While it's one of the stupidest ideas ever, in his defence, he's not the first politician to have it. A certain Liz Truss (of 'opening new pork markets in Beijing' fame), also tried out the idea (in this case, an 'Energy Price Guarantee') in her über-brief stint as British prime minister, in which she was outlasted by a lettuce.

The consequences for working-class people in Britain were horrific and near instant: headline inflation reached a 41-year high of 11.1% in October 2022. For the bottom 10% of earners, real income plummeted by 6.6%. Average two-year fixed mortgage rates surged from below 4% to over 6% following her move.

Price controls are of course, a valid left-wing policy - in a country with a left-wing government, with nationalised industries. For anyone who has been living under a rock for the last century, Ireland does not have a left-wing government and is not an oil producing country. Even if PBP-S were to find hitherto undiscovered levels of popularity with the working class and storm into government tomorrow, they cannot nationalise Irish oil. Because it doesn't exist.

What this means of course, is that a price cap on oil is a blank cheque, signed by me and you, to the likes of Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. And while a left-wing government could do many things to challenge the neoliberal economic consensus: like running a managed deficit and quantitative easing, progressive taxation remains a key component of funding public services like universal healthcare, education and social housing.

Paul, of course, knows all this. While my schooling was done in Handsworth, in inner-city Birmingham, Paul was educated a fee-paying school in Clonskeagh. So I really don't understand his advocacy of a policy that steals tax from schools in Ballymun to subsidise the fuel going into SUVs in Blackrock.

To put all this into context: the temporary measures announced by the government yesterday, mainly benefitting large haulage and agri firms, will cost over half a billion euro. In real world terms, that's around 1,700 units of social housing, 220 MRI machines, or over 8,000 extra teachers and nurses for a year. And these measures don't go as far as Paul and PBP-S want, and are only going to last until July.

Somewhere along the way, Paul and PBP-S have lost their way. Socialism isn't an aesthetic and it isn't a vaguely defined vibe. Left politics is, above all else, the centring of class-interests and agitation along those lines. Raiding the coffers to pay for D4 Rugby Dads' fuel at the expense of social housing, teachers and nurses? As Liz Truss might say: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Aontacht Media emailed Paul Murphy asking for further clarifications on this policy. At the time of publication, no response has been received.