Energy is needed for Britain, not speeches

WHAT exactly were the Tories doing all last week in Manchester? That’s easy. Congratulating themselves and each other. Much harder is the second question: for what exactly?

This country is on the threshold of a winter of privation and discontent to match that of 1978-’79. Services we foolishly presumed to be eternal are collapsing, right, left and centre, starting with DVLA Swansea, which now has a 300,000 application backlog that is going to need at least a year to clear. Many asked for a licence renewal a year ago and are still driving (legally) without one.

Everything we do not want to rise is going through the roof – taxes, prices, pettifoggin’ bureaucracy, queues, form-filling and costs to the taxpayer. Supplies of what we vitally need are drying up – often for lack of delivery drivers. Crops go unpicked now the cheapo Europeans have pulled out and gone home and in-country replacements either have never been trained or cannot be paid enough.

Rishi Sunak’s money tree finally, and wholly predictably, looks thoroughly diseased, but looming far larger and more dangerous over us all is the pending energy crisis. I may have mentioned this before to the point of yawn time, but the yawning will end as the first Beast from the East roars in and we sit shivering in homes we can no longer afford to heat.

It would be impossible to have predicted the mess the Government could have made out of energy policy on needs and supply thereof. There was the chance of fracking for the vast ocean of natural gas and oil on which this country sits. Ignored.

There were the new technologies for fast, affordable, small and safe nuclear generators. Lethargy prevailed – nothing done. Our electricity supplies have been left in the hands of France – still our friends as Macron indulges his hysteria over those submarines? Our gas supplies depend on Russia now and Putin can turn off the taps any time he feels like it. Liquid petroleum gas arrives by tanker from the Middle East – we hope. Wind and sun do not scratch the surface of our problem but burning coal is still a no-no for eco reasons.

Geo-thermal energy – not even explored with an experimental project. Hydroelectricity (our eternal and free tides) barely touched.

But energy in any form to generate electricity is the key – for the lights staying on, the radiators staying warm, for the industrial machines to turn, for the delivery trucks to roll, for our many domestic devices to function. Cut that off and we’re dead. But December’s supply? In the lap of the gods.

What really rankles at village green and street corner level is that everything going wrong was predictable and therefore preventable. But never mind, Boris Johnson made a wonderful closing speech.

Very funny. But Tommy Cooper was funny. We never put him in Downing Street. Perhaps we should have. He could not have made a bigger cock-up than BoJo.

So I predict that come December, the Telegraph and Mail will be singing a different tune.