The price of exposure: how Britain's dependence creates vulnerability

When the Bank of England warned this week that food inflation could reach 7% by the end of the year, it revealed how little stands between a geopolitical jolt and a domestic crisis in Britain. A shock wave in the Gulf feeds through energy, fertiliser and supermarket prices into falling incomes, weak growth and job losses. What it exposes is not just inflation but a system unable to absorb disruption. The Bank is right that interest rates cannot move global energy prices. Raising them will not fix the shock. Instead, rate hikes redistribute the impact by compressing wages and deterring investment to stop higher costs becoming embedded. What appears as inflation is, in reality, the price of dependence on the strait of Hormuz. Clearly, the UK's stability rests on security that the country that has yet to build into its infrastructure. Britain is not weak, but it is exposed. Its key sectors – finance, energy, data, food – are tightly bound and run on thin margins. If fertiliser is so critical, why did the UK hold no reserves? Because efficiency has been considered more important than resilience – and buffer stocks are treated as wasteful. Europe once paid to build resilience into its food system. It may need to do so again. The more connected modern life becomes, the more vulnerable it is. Last year, security researchers showed how a "poisoned" calendar invite could hijack Google's Gemini AI chatbot to control lights, shutters and boilers in a home. In the hands of a hostile state, such exploits could bring Britain to a halt. National security depends on the integrity of civilian digital infrastructure. This was part of the message in a speech by Fiona Hill, one of the co-authors of the UK's 2025 strategic defence review. Her warning to Britain was that the public is already exposed to forms of war; it's just that people don't recognise them as such. The systems that sustain daily life – including communications and healthcare – are vulnerable to disruption from hacking, subversion and economic coercion. Ms Hill argued that citizens should be primed for privation or participation, but not for trench warfare. She wanted to refocus on the threats today. The UK, she warned, has "already experienced sabotage and cyber-attacks by Russia". She said the UK homeland is "back on the pitch" as the rules-based order is dismantled by Donald Trump and the US retreats from guaranteeing European security. The task is to face rising instability and change the public mindset without turning society into a security project. Instinctively, the world feels better when butter is preferred over guns. But such a choice perhaps belongs to an earlier age. In a world of hybrid warfare, the distinction between civilian welfare and national defence is rapidly eroding. The question is no longer whether to prioritise butter or guns, but how to defend the systems that make both possible. Ms Hill's approach needs a political narrative that Britain lacks: one that links security to the economy and everyday life. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has come closest to developing one. UK politics is largely focused on the cost of living, NHS waiting lists and immigration, not resilience or systemic risks. Without a shift, the policies that Ms Hill advocates risk appearing abstract or alarmist. That would make it harder to build public consent for the structural changes that her speech implies.