Sure, I suspect you're correct that the Government probably haven't acknowledged the reality that Brexit has caused a lot of problems. And yes, that's regrettable. But that doesn't justify going to the opposite (equally wrong) extreme of blaming Brexit for all our ills, while failing to acknowledge that (a) Brexit has also brought some benefits, and (b) the cost-of-living problems starting to hit are caused mostly by Covid and Putin, with Brexit probably only contributing a small amount. I think the point stands that the cost of living crisis is caused mainly (though not entirely) by things that were outside the Government's control
Brexit benefits like Happy Fish (one of the short list of items cited by Rees Mogg when asked about it in parliament).
Joking aside whilst the cost of living is mostly from external factors there could have been more done to reduce the impact.
For instance keeping in place support for solar panels and better insulation would have meant that more people would have had them and so whilst their energy costs would have increased by the same percentages the real increases would have been smaller (i.e double £100 is £200, whilst double £90 is £180). However with more progress having been made on reducing our carbon emissions it would have also been easier to reduce the extra charges on our household energy bills for green incentives further reducing the overall impact.
Likewise if there had been continued support for public transport (rather than cuts since 2010) it would have aided in slowing the rate of growth in car ownership. Again limiting the impact (a good example of this is just how much school bus provision had been under attack, where even a cheap bus pass is often cheaper than the fuel for the parents).
Likewise it highlights the shortsightedness of not continuing with more electrification.
Now whilst some of that may have required higher council taxes, there would likely have been savings to some in that they wouldn't have had to have been making payments for using services which previously were free (given the extra staff time in dealing with payments and transaction fees reduce the overall benefit of those payments compared to mass collection of taxes).
It's been said for some time, although environmental concerns had been rightly highlighted in greater amounts of late, that the West tends to have to rely on the sorts of places for it's oil that we'd rather not have to rely on. As such this is just a fairly predicable outcome on not decarbonising our economy more over the last 30 years.
Yes it would have been more expensive that what we did at the time, however chances are those savings could fairly rapidly get wiped out.
For instance if 10 years ago my fuel bill has been 25% more to provide green measures that would have cost me about £16/month (or about £2,000 over that 10 year period), in the next 12 months fuel costs are likely to be half that figure based on the unlikely event that there's no extra fuel increases in October.
Yes there would still have been cost increases, however the impact would have been a lot less with a lower reliance on gas. Chances are we'd have seen some significant more tidal generation coming online, which would be able to provide the baseload required to protect against still cloudy days. However with a higher uptake over a longer timeframe the reduction in costs we've seen would have happened (possibly sooner) and benefiting far more people with reductions in their energy bills (probably so that the extra costs were offset by the savings).
According to a BBC article we'd only need to have reduced our gas and oil use by 6% to be in a position where we wouldn't have needed any from Russia (the reality is that we'd have been using it and so there would still have to be cuts, but busy not as much). If it had allowed a 10% fall it would have eased things for others in the EU, even if they hadn't gone as far as we had.
That sort of change (even a 10% fall in hydrocarbon use) should have been possible without too much of an impact.
However where it would have likely made a bigger impact would have been that other nations would have potentially followed suit sooner which could have resulted in lower oil prices following the pandemic. Which in turn could have meant a weaker Russian economy, which would have meant they were less likely to have had the military spending to invade.
It's likely one of the reasons that they are invading now, as if they waited even 5 years we'd have a lot more electric cars and so oil would be less of an issue. Likewise many more would have got solar and heat pumps reducing our need for gas.
