‘Blame it all on business’ was the Tory strategists’ answer to petrol queues and the risk of a no-turkey Christmas that threatened to distract the party-conference faithful from adulation of the Prime Minister. As spin, it might have been shocking if it wasn’t so familiar. But as an explanation of the supply crisis, the idea that business has been deaf to years of warnings that it could no longer rely on immigrant labour is hogwash, rivalled only by the proposition that spiralling wages will lead us to a fairer society — rather than contributing to a bout of uncontrolled inflation...