Fossil, Fuel

Silence as beautiful as Bach from those who usually cheerlead for Tony Blair. Blair never put Ed Miliband in the Cabinet, to which he was appointed immediately by his patron, Gordon Brown. The Blairites wanted The Other One as Leader in 2015, so that David Miliband, Peter Mandelson and Andrew Adonis could have continued to attend Cabinet in order to see off any backsliding from privatisation, austerity and war. As it was, the Liberal Democrats did that job for them.

But 2024 was the first General Election in 19 years at which Blair voted Labour. Unless in 2019 he happened to have a candidate of Change UK or whatever it as calling itself by then, he has voted for the party that has come out with the single largest number of seats every time since 1997. You just know it. The faltering Keir Starmer is already 62, so Blair wants to take out any potential rival to Wes Streeting, who would be the most right-wing Leader of either main party since the War.

Blair's idolaters now have to oppose Net Zero, and from this evening or tomorrow, once the shock had dulled a bit, they will do so, since that is how cults work. Until today, those of us who were resistant to anti-industrial Malthusianism and misanthropy were called Flat Earthers, and compared to Holocaust deniers, by exactly those individuals. Miliband has been something of a disappointment; I remember his addressing the Durham Miners' Gala that Blair had always refused to attend even though his constituency had begun less than a mile from the venue, and promising a role for coal in future energy policy. But Miliband, though now wrong, is at least sincere. His mind might never have changed if he had become Prime Minister 10 years ago.

The Tony Blair Institute is funded by the Saudis, so Blair does not mean capturing the carbon from fuel produced in this fuel-rich country. And whoever will be doing the capturing will also no doubt have paid him, or be paying him, or both. Likewise, someone in or around the Government is being paid by whoever would be supplying the drones to track down fly-tippers, whom I vigorously deplore, and destroy their valuable property for a civil offence with a maximum fine of £400, although let me repeat that I despise fly-tippers. Watch out for how all of this will somehow be deemed to necessitate universal and compulsory digital ID. Supplied, of course, by generous paymasters of politicians past and present. Perhaps the trade unions should get in there? But the thing would still be wrong in principle, as well as doomed to inflict chaos in practice. And in any case, they won't.

Closely connected is the Government's refusal to protect the right to use cash. This is not about being against cards or apps. Of course I use mine all the time. This is about vulnerable people, local circular economies, and civil liberties. In France, Article 642-3 of the penal code bans traders from refusing cash payment. We need that here. No, the legal tender thing does not cover it. You are not in debt to the vendor until you have the goods. A suspicious number of those who decry us sceptics of the cashless society also claim that we are under constant threat of cyberattacks, and a surprising number of those who are forthright against the cashless society are enthusiasts for cryptocurrencies, about which the clue is in the name.