Saturday Westminster — A Second Day of Falling Oil Deepens the Rayner Government’s Fragile Relief as an Iran Deal Nears and Makerfield Runs to June 18 With Reform Still Clear
For the second day running, the news from the Gulf ran in Angela Rayner’s favour. The same near-final Iran deal that sent crude sliding toward $84 deepened the first genuine relief her government has had from the fuel shock that has defined its short life. With a peace text agreed and a signing floated for the weekend, the Prime Minister can now point not just to a falling price but to the prospect of a reopened Strait of Hormuz — the thing that would actually end the squeeze. The trouble is that none of it has reached the forecourt yet, and Makerfield votes on Thursday.
The Relief Deepens — but Slowly
A second consecutive day of falling crude turns a one-day blip into something closer to a trend, and Number 10 will treat it as such. If a deal is signed and Hormuz reopens, the supply shock that drove record pump prices unwinds at source — the difference between a market dipping on hope and a market falling on barrels actually flowing. But the lag is the politics. Wholesale crude takes weeks to reach the pumps, and a government that has lived every day of its existence on the cost of filling a car cannot tell voters the relief has arrived when the number on the forecourt sign has barely moved.
The Treasury’s Silence Holds
The Treasury has still not blinked. Despite a fortnight of pressure and now two days of falling crude, HM Treasury declined again to commit to any fuel-duty relief, saying only that it was monitoring the impact of cheaper oil on inflation and the public finances. The logic is fiscal: if the market is doing the work, why spend money the government does not have to do it again? The risk is political: a Chancellor who withholds relief on the way up looks miserly, and one who withholds it on the way down looks redundant. Rachel Reeves is betting the deal arrives before the argument does.
Makerfield — The Clock Runs to June 18
The by-election does not wait for the oil price. Makerfield runs to its June 18 close with Reform UK holding the clear lead it has carried throughout, and four days of cheaper crude will not rewrite a contest shaped by a fortnight of record costs. Nigel Farage made the point bluntly this week: voters do not forget a month of pain because of a few days of relief. For Labour, the seat remains a test it is braced to lose, and a falling oil price — welcome as it is — arrives too late and too slowly to change the arithmetic on the doorstep.
The Burnham Wound Stays Open
And the internal sore has not healed. The revolt of around fifty Labour MPs over the blocking of Andy Burnham from the Gorton and Denton by-election still simmers beneath a government straining to look outward at the Gulf. Good news abroad has bought Rayner a better week than she has had any right to expect; it has bought her nothing at home, where the question of who Labour will permit to stand remains as raw as it was when the letter first circulated. A reopened strait would ease the politics of the pump. It would do nothing for the politics of the party.
The Weekend Ahead
Rayner enters the weekend in the unfamiliar position of hoping a foreign signing goes ahead on schedule. A deal in Europe would let her claim, with some justice, that the crisis made abroad was being ended abroad — the argument she has reached for since taking office. A collapse at the final gate would send crude and pump prices back up days before Makerfield votes. For a Prime Minister who controls none of the variables that matter most to her, it has been a good fortnight built entirely on events she cannot command. She will spend the weekend, like the oil market, watching Europe.