Huhne goes – but his crazy policies carry on

IT WAS somehow apt that the resignation of Chris Huhne as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change should have coincided with devastatingly cold weather which has killed more than 100 people in central and eastern Europe. We can only regret that his reason for stepping down was unconnected to the fact that, as I have often observed, he was less fitted to occupy his office than any minister in our history. For 20 months he presided with charmless fanaticism and astonishing ignorance over what will eventually be seen as this Government’s most disastrous policy – a drive to skew our national energy policy in the name of various dotty green delusions that, unless it is soon put into reverse, can only result in the destruction of our economy.

Nothing better illustrated the bubble of global-warming-obsessed unreality that Mr Huhne lived in than his last reckless boast – that our future electricity supplies should rely on “32,000 wind turbines”, which would cover some 4,000 square miles of our countryside and sea at astronomic expense, to achieve virtually no benefit whatever.

So deluded was Mr Huhne by the “climate change” bit of his job description that not one of his actions in office showed any practical understanding of the “energy” part, and how we are going to survive when we lose all those coal-fired and nuclear power stations which currently supply more than a third of our electricity.

Mr Huhne may have gone, but the officials running his ministry remain. A far more important question than what now happens to him personally is whether that ministry can be brought back to earth, to be redirected to what should be its key task – to keep Britain’s lights on and our computer-dependent economy continuing to function. The omens, one has to say, are not good.