No, Zac Goldsmith, Teslas are not the solution to the fuel crisis

I am not generally given to conspiracy theories, but I have to say there was a point last week where I started asking myself whether there are people in government saying to each other ‘these queues at petrol stations – they are exactly what we need if we are going to persuade people to buy electric cars and phase out petrol and diesel by 2030’.

It seems I wasn’t wrong. Except, that is, Zac Goldsmith, a foreign office minister, isn’t saying it quietly. He said in an interview with the Independent of the petrol crisis: “It’s a pretty good lesson on the need to unhook ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels. You’re not seeing the same problems with people who have electric vehicles.”

When you are a member of a government which has just managed to create a crisis from nothing, and which continues to bumble around as people struggle to get to work, to school, to hospital appointments, it is not a very clever thing to say.