Tony Helps Out

Since his place in the footnotes of American history is inextricably bound up with his war crimes in the service of petroleum profiteering, it is natural that the Reverend Blair should feel a certain moral and spiritual kinship with the fossil fuel lobby. In his latest encyclical from the basilica of the Institute of His Very Own Self, the Venerable Sir Anthony of the Garter decrees that any thought of phasing out fossil fuels or limiting their consumption is blasphemy and anathema, and preaches that emissions should instead be limited using technology and constructing lots and lots of blanched radioactive pachyderms. Speaking anonymously to protect their personal safety, at least one Labour expenses claimant has criticised the intervention as unhelpful; but it remains to be revealed whether Team Starmer might venture to voice significant disagreement with anything so closely attuned to the stated position of the extreme right. In any case, his reverence deserves credit for having at last discovered a question to which the answer is neither wog-bombing nor a surveillance state.