Darling demands cheaper petrol

The government’s demands that oil companies cut petrol prices are now getting beyond parody.  Alistair Darling repeated them on GMTV this morning – blithely ingnoring the fact that fuel taxes account for well over half the cost of petrol at the pumps.  Fern Britton, for one, wouldn’t have let him get away with it.

The question hovering over all this is whether the Treasury will go ahead with a planned 2p rise in fuel duty.  There’s always the chance that Brown ‘n’ Darling could try and gain some political capital – and attept to steal Nick Clegg’s “reduce the burden on low-income earners” thunder – by scrapping it in the forthcoming pre-Budget report.  But if the 10p tax debacle is anything to go by, the public aren’t likely to forget who planned the increases in the first place; particularly if the opposition parties do their job in reminding them.  Watch this space.