Will Cameron have a Brown moment over petrol?

Remember when Gordon Brown came up against Fern Britton in a TV interview? I’ve pasted the video above to remind CoffeeHousers of two persistent truths: how tricky a subject petrol costs can be for a serving Prime Minister (watch on from around the 0:50 mark), and how Labour are hardly blameless when it comes to the current cost of fuel. As Britton asks in the interview, “How much tax do you put on the fuel?” And the answer that Brown mumbled to avoid, from a House of Commons briefing note at the time, was this:

In other words, for a huge portion of the New Labour years, fuel duty accounted for over half of the petrol price at the pumps. For a typical litre of fuel, duty was 36.86 pence when Labour came to power, and 57.19 pence when they left. The fuel duty hikes that the coalition are planning were pencilled in by Alastair Darling.