Probably A Fracking Good Idea

If something sounds too good to be true...

Still, if it is there at all, then it is in the right places. Like coal. Except that we know with absolute certainty that the coal is there.

Shale gas could help to keep us ticking over for a few decades. As a strict ancillary to coal, which can and must keep us ticking over for centuries, and nuclear power, which can and must keep us ticking over forever.

The exposure of Greenery as anything but left-wing is, I suppose, useful for those who might ever have needed such an elementary education.

But it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, even if a touch hollowly, at the sudden conversion of the likes of Daniel Hannan, James Delingpole and Fraser Nelson to the provision of energy by means of secure, unionised, high-wage, high-skilled, high-status, mostly male employment, in this country and guaranteed by the State.

Now that those are the terms of the debate, though, over to Labour.