Example one, in the debate around North Sea oil and gas, a government spokesperson said, “issuing new licenses to explore new fields cannot give us energy security and will not take a penny off bills.” Only the blinkered would embrace this line to take. The question should be, will it help with our energy security compared to importing, to which the answer must be a yes. If new extraction yields higher tax revenues, could those be used to reduce bills – obviously the answer is a big fat yes. Totally the opposite of the government line and they know it, that’s why they carefully crafted their words.

Example two, “the UK needs to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and on to clean homegrown power we control.” It sounds great, it is a superb soundbite but that’s all it is. It is not a credible policy statement. Firstly, even the government admits we will be using fossil fuels for decades to come, so we are hardly breaking away from the market. And secondly, and yes I will repeat it, when that clean homegrown power is intermittent, we can have no control. Ironically, but I guess they don’t do irony, is that intermittency is only possible because we have fossil fuel back up for power generation. That rollercoaster we need to wean ourselves off.

I get that energy policy is polarised between net zero or not and that is not healthy. But it would help those who want to tackle climate change if the arguments were at least credible and based on evidence, not a clever soundbite dreamt up in Whitehall. That’s me telling truth to power.