Here’s one for Ken Clarke –
Send in the clowns!

Last Tuesday I visited the Arlette Gruss Circus, in the pretty Alsace town of Colmar, an hour’s drive from Strasbourg.  I was a guest of  the Association for the Promorion of Traditional Circus Arts, APTCA.

It is decades since I attended a proper circus, so it was an exciting opportunity to revisit an important cultural tradition.  But the main reason for going was to get some context on the on-going debate on the use of animals in circus (and indeed in zoos).  So appropriately enough we started with the animals, which between shows are kept in zoo-type conditions, with cages but also with small exercise areas.  This facility operates between shows as a zoo, and is visited as such by the public, for entertainment and edification.  There were of course horses.  I spend much of my time around horses, having a couple at home, and to my untutored eye these beasts seemed to be in good condition, and entirely relaxed.

I reflected that keeping and training horses for dressage is regarded as a wholly excellent activity.  Yet when similar training and performance is undertaken for the circus, it seems to get the strident animal rights lobby hot under the collar.  In the show, the “ringmaster” for the horses’ act was a girl of only thirteen — born and raised in the circus.  I can imagine that the horses’ training — and hers — were a mutual learning experience.  And Yes, she did have a whip, but No, she didn’t use it to lash the horses.  Rather, it’s an extension of her arm, enabling her to reach out and communicate with them across the ring.

There were a couple of Shetland ponies.  Then the “Exotics”.  Zebras (including the compulsory “zedonk” cross).  Llamas.  A camel.  A couple of unusual and impressive bovines.  And after the exotics, the elephants — four handsome Asian elephants.  These were being groomed for the evening’s show.  I noticed that a couple of them were shifting from foot to foot with a rhythmic motion.  This of course is claimed by the “animal rights” lobby to be evidence of boredom, anxiety, ennui and stress.  But studies of elephants in the wild by serious scientists  show that this is an entirely natural and commonplace behaviour.  In such a large beast, the action of the heart, in pumping blood, is augmented by the motion of the legs, which, in conjunction with the valve system in the arteries, assists in returning blood from the feet.  This happens automatically when elephants walk.  When they stand still, they get the same effect by rocking.

Then the pièce de résistance — the big cats.  There were a couple of magnificent white lions, three tigers, a “liger” (lion/tiger cross), and several others that I lost count of.  We were shown around by Tom, a third-generation lion trainer also born and raised in the circus.  When I saw the big cats, they were all asleep.  Like most big predators, they do rather a lot of sleeping between feeds.  I was particularly struck by the three tigers, lying side by side, each with a paw over the next, for all the world like my cats at home in front of the Aga.  Again, they had cages at the back but much larger pens in front.

I asked, perhaps naïvely, how Tom roused them from their refreshing slumbers to get them set for work.  Rather easily, it turns out.  They hear the music from the big top when the performance starts, and they know it’s Showtime, and are keen to participate.  I heard some touching anecdotal evidence about the attitude of the animals to their work.  There was the animal behaviourist who arranged for only half of a troupe of eight elephants to perform.  The remainder, left outside, clearly understood that they were missing the show, and became visibly anxious and vexed, and actually tried to perform their routine outside.

Or the old lioness who was deemed to have earned an honourable retirement.  But on being left out of the act, she showed such marked signs of distress that they had to let her into the ring, though by reason of age she did little but sit down and sleep through the act.  Certainly from what little I know of horses, they love to work, and look forward to outings.  There is nothing that gets a horse quite so excited as arriving at the Meet.

There are ignorant romantics on the fringes of the animal rights lobby who propose that circus lions should be released back into the wild.  But of course the animals we see in circuses today have been bred in zoos and circuses for generations — more than half a century.  There is no way they’d survive in the wild.  I made a point of visiting the freezer truck, stacked with beef for the big cats.  Without it, they’d be in very poor shape.

I understand that in the UK, DEFRA is looking at the laws relating to circus animals, and has grudgingly conceded that there is no welfare case for banning animal acts in circuses.  But under intense pressure from the strident animal rights lobby, they are now considering whether in the absence of any welfare case, there may be “a moral case” to ban animal acts.  This is bizarre.  The only basis for any moral case would be animal welfare, and they’ve already agreed that there is no such case.  There is a real danger that groundless opposition to circus animals will become a shibboleth of “politically correct” thinking, accepted without thought or analysis, to the extreme detriment of a great European circus tradition.

The animal rights lobby, as I’ve often said, is driven more by hatred of people than love of animals.  Opposing animals in circuses has become simply an article of faith, pursued with almost religious fervour, and entirely divorced from the real interests of animals.  Let’s not forget that PETA, http://www.peta.org/ a lynch-pin of the animal rights movement, has declared that its ultimate aim is to ban domestic pets (or as they would say, “companion animals”) entirely, on the grounds that owning a pet is “demeaning to the animal”.  Try telling that to my cats as they stretch out in front of the Aga.

John Cridland, CBI Director General

I always thought that John Cridland, Director General of the CBI, was a pretty sensible sort of chap.  I wouldn’t say I know him well, though I’ve met him a couple of times over the years.  But what I’ve seen and heard suggested he was a sound if unspectacular voice for a common-sense approach to industry and the British economy.

So I was sorry to see (DT, May 17^th) that Mr. Cridland fears talk of an EU referendum is stealing focus from what should be the government’s key priorities — jobs and growth.  This is a common canard, and rather too many commentators have made the same spurious point.  They’re treating it as “either/or”.  You can devote time and effort to something they see as marginal — EU membership, an obsession of some in the political classes which means little (they say) to the average voter.  Or we could — and should — use that time and effort to focus laser-like on the top priority for both voters and industry.  Growth and jobs.

This is an appalling fallacy, and shows a deep ignorance of the malign impact which the EU has on the British economy.  So let’s say it loud and clear: one of the two key reasons we want an EU referendum, one of the two key reasons why we should be Better Off Out, is precisely because EU membership damages growth and jobs.  We’re concerned about EU membership not instead of concern for growth and jobs.  We’re concerned about it because of growth and jobs.

The EU is the only major economic area in the world in long-term relative economic decline.  Close to 30% of global GDP in 1980, it’s now around 19%, and could be 10% by 2040.  We are shackled to a sinking ship.  Meantime the costs to the UK of our EU membership are estimated by Tim Congdon to be around £150 bn, or close to 10% of GDP.  This is an enormous burden on our economy.

Mr. Cridland says “British companies may struggle to survive without access to our primary market”.  Why does he imagine that on leaving the EU we should cease to have access to European markets?  Is the USA, or China, or Canada excluded from European markets?  When we leave, the UK will be the EU’s largest export market.  Are they going to put that at risk?  Does Mr. Cridland know that over recent decades, EU imports from non-EU countries have grown faster than continental imports from the UK?  On this basis, membership seems more like a barrier to trade than an advantage.

Then he trots out the inevitable comparison with Norway and Switzerland — two small countries on the margin of Europe.  Like them (he says) we should be subject to EU rules but have no voice in making them (though we have precious little voice now).  But the UK economy, in terms of size, is somewhere between those of Canada and the USA.  Are they subject to EU rules with no say in making them?  Do they have problems with access to the Single Market?  No.  And nor shall we.

In the same paper, we have good old Peter Mandelson, “Cameron must not cave in to the UKIP threat”. His piece might justify a thorough deconstruction, but I’ll highlight only one point: his repeated references to UKIP’s “isolationist” position.  Why on earth does he think that national independence and self-determination are “isolationist”?  Just for the record, in life before politics I worked for decades in multinational companies, including more than a decade resident in Asia.  I see Britain as a great global trading nation.  I see leaving the inward-looking, protectionist EU as rejoining the rest of the world — not embracing isolation.

Britain has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.  We are part of NATO, the OECD, the World Bank, the G8/20.  We are the leading country of the Commonwealth (whose GDP has recently overtaken the eurozone).  Out of the EU, we’d re-join the WTO in our own right.  Undoubtedly we’d have a free trade deal with Europe — as so many others have.  Far from isolationist, the UK is one of the most globally-connected countries in the world.  The idea that to avoid isolation we have to be governed from Brussels is both wrong and offensive.

Earlier I said that the economy was one of the two reasons we’d be Better Off Out.  And the other?  It’s a little matter of freedom, independence and democracy.

I have been arguing for a long time that EU energy policy is a disaster for competitiveness.  It is driving up energy costs, forcing industries, and investment, and jobs out of the EU altogether.  And at the same time, it is leaving millions of households and pensioners in fuel poverty, many forced to choose between eating and heating.  And after all that, it is not clear that it is having any impact at all on emissions.  Indeed it may, perversely, increase them, by forcing industry out to other jurisdictions with lower environmental standards.  I understand that a ton of steel made in China results in twice the emissions as the same ton of steel made in Europe.

I’ve been puzzled by the fact that industry generally has been very slow to make the case on energy costs.  I’ve had some large energy users worrying privately about power costs, but most large companies seem to be intimidated by Big Green, and daren’t voice their concerns.  Marks & Spencers lorries carry that absurd slogan “Plan A.  Because there is no Plan B”.  Yes there is a Plan B, Mr. Marks.  Plan B is, don’t do Plan A.

Now, however, BusinessEurope, one of the major European industrial lobby groups, has put its head over the parapet and told Mr. José Manuel Barroso in no uncertain terms that it’s time to stop focussing on climate mitigation, and to concentrate instead on competitiveness and security of supply: And about time too.  As the Good Book says, “There is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth”.  At last, we have a tentative outbreak of common sense.

But what about the European parliament, that bastion of green orthodoxy that can be relied on to support climate alarmism through thick and thin?  There are signs of a breach in the dyke, and the little Dutch Boy’s finger may no longer suffice to stem the tide.  I wrote recently about the parliament’s vote on the Commission’s ETS back-loading proposal, which the parliament rejected — for once putting jobs and competitiveness ahead of climate policy.

And earlier this week, we had another small but surprising — and very encouraging — development.  An amendment mildly critical of wind turbines and solar panels was passed, albeit by a tight margin.  By 337 votes to 324. in a report on Renewable Energy, the following amendment was passed: “39. Points out that, in some regions, especially small communities and islands, the deployment of windmills and photovoltaic panels has met with public opposition; points out that windmills and photovoltaic panels are perceived to have an adverse effect on tourist industries and on the nature and form of countryside/island landscapes”.

That’s right.  The European parliament recognised, for the first time, the downsides of renewables, at least in terms of landscape and visual intrusion.  I can’t call it a breakthrough or a sea-change, but it’s certainly tip-toeing in the right direction.

No.  Honest.  I’ve checked the date, and it’s May 19^th (as I write), not All Fools’ Day (except in Brussels, where it’s All Fools’ Day all the time).  It really does seem to be true that the EU wants to ban olive oil from restaurant tables, unless it’s served in individual sealed containers carrying mandatory information and declarations.  Bizarrely, a restaurant will be able to serve house wine in a decanter — or water in a jug — with no provenance at all.  But not olive oil.

Tory MEP Martin Callanan rightly asks whether the EU has nothing better to do than to instigate this ban. No government or legislature should be interfering in this way in the fine grain of our daily lives, and seeking to regulate the minutiae of the dining table.  One of the great problems of our age is the hubristic assumption by governments of all stripes that they can legislate for anything at all that they happen to think is a good idea, without considering whether this is a legitimate area for state action.

But there are very substantial reasons for opposing this ban — æsthetic, environmental, competitive, public health — in addition to a general objection to the NannyState.

The new packs will deliver some prescribed quantity, which will tend to lead to waste.  A great deal more packaging will be used. And eventually go to landfill.  It is ironic that when some MEPs are campaigning against bottled water, to save packaging waste, we should be mandating individual bottles for olive oil.  And clearly the price will be higher to cover the additional packaging.

Some restaurants will reluctantly switch to the pre-pack olive oil.  Others will conclude that they can go without, and that customers can make do with butter.  A healthy option will be quite literally taken off the table.  I will particularly regret this, as I’ve recently got into the habit of dunking my bread in oil (it comes of having an Italian staffer).  (Apologies to dairy farmers, by the way, but I think olive oil probably is healthier than butter).  Any benefits to European producers by elimination cheaper substitutes will be offset by an overall reduction in use.  And given that fraudsters having little difficulty in producing counterfeit cigarettes, I expect counterfeit pre-pack olive oil to be the next big thing.

In terms of competition, pre-pack olive oil will be a boon to the large-scale industrial food industry, but a barrier to entry for smaller or artisanal producers.  So on average, quality will go down.  Think of the serious restaurateur who loves to discover particular vineyards for his vin de maison, and particular olive oil producers.  He can keep buying and serving the wine, but his special olive oil will not be available pre-packed.  Like so much EU regulation, this ban will create barriers to entry which will support big corporations, but will militate against new, small and innovative suppliers.

Then there is the æsthetic issue.  I’ve been in many restaurants where the waiter serves olive oil, from an elegant bottle with a special stopper, allowing oil out and air in.  Perhaps the bottle also has herbs in it, flavouring the oil.  He pours it with a swagger almost as a sommelier would pour wine.  The unctuous greeny-yellow liquid sits effulgent in its porcelain saucer, with delicious drifting aromas of the warm south.  That’s part of the dining experience.

And what shall we get instead, courtesy of Brussels?  Wretched little plastic bottles (it’s sure to be plastic) with the EU’s mandatory product information, for all the world like a sachet of Heinz tomato sauce in a cheap café.  It cheapens and devalues the dining experience.

So why are they doing this?  To protect us, the consumers, from the risk that dishonest restaurateurs might serve cheaper oil.  Did we ask to be protected?  Do they think we can’t tell the difference between good olive oil and bad oil?  Can’t they leave it to the market?  If I go to a restaurant and I’m served rubbish, I simply won’t go back.

In fact the restaurants in the European parliament itself routinely offer a condiment set on the tables that includes salt, pepper, vinegar and olive oil — and I often use it to dunk my bread.  I wonder if they’ll obey the new rules as well.

It is time for restaurateurs and diners to rise up and say “Enough is enough!  Up with this we will not put!”.  As a general principle, I (and UKIP) support the rule of law.  But this is a step too far.  It brings the law into disrepute, and hits us where it hurts.  In our stomachs.  The only response is open defiance.  I shall make a point of patronising any restaurants that stand by free olive oil, properly served.

Cameron with French President Hollande

Those who follow EU affairs will remember Tony Blair’s extraordinarily naïve decision to give away a big chunk of our EU budget rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher at Fontainebleau, in exchange for a promise of a “root and branch reform” of the Common Agricultural Policy.  Our partners in Brussels happily pocketed the money, but somehow the promise of CAP reform never materialised.  Now, rumour has it, Cameron is about to make a similar elementary negotiating blunder — offering a real and immediate benefit to the other side (like Blair’s decision, involving many billions of Pounds) in exchange for promises which are not only vague, but which actually look undeliverable.

I freely admit that I am retailing gossip here, but it is gossip that chimes with what we know.  I think my sources are reliable, but I am not in a position to reveal them.  I should be very happy to be told that I was mistaken.  Maybe somebody at Number Ten, or somebody at DECC, might like to put me right.

The Coalition government is rightly desperate to get on with its nuclear programme, and is having serious difficulty — largely, I believe, because no company wants to commit a multi-billion Pound investment over six decades, in the face of massive regulatory uncertainty.  When politicians like Angela Merkel can close down the German nuclear industry in response to some bad publicity, investors will think twice.

Currently the government and DECC are negotiating with French nuclear company EDF over two new reactors at Hinckley Point.  I’m told that the Brits are prepared to guarantee a price of £80 per MWh over twenty years, while the French want £100 over 35 years.  MPs are claiming that EDF could make £90 billion over the course of the contract. And of course it’s the poor bl**dy consumer — whether household or industry — who will end up paying.

This whole proposal is a huge bet on oil futures.  If fossil fuel energy follows the script, and becomes more and more expensive, there may come a time when even £100 per MWh looks attractive.  But future prices so rarely do follow the script, and with unconventional oil and gas in the picture, the proposed EDF deal could be a disaster.  Equally, of course, renewables are a similar bet on oil futures.  And that’s without even considering cheap coal.

Cameron is said to have had a meeting scheduled with French President Francoise Hollande to seek to break the impasse — though this meeting was cancelled as a result of the Thatcher funeral.  They are expected to meet shortly.  While the British government is under pressure to kick-start its nuclear programme, Hollande is also under pressure to deliver a major project overseas for a leading French industry.

Now the difficult bit.  I’m being told that Cameron is prepared to be flexible on the pricing for EDF in exchange for undertakings from Hollande that he, Hollande, will be helpful in the matter of Cameron’s EU renegotiation.  So our “heir to Blair” will be following his mentor, and giving away real money — rather a lot of it — in exchange for promises of future support in Europe.

It is frankly extraordinary naïveté on the part of Cameron to think he can gain unilateral concessions from Brussels in the first place.  Those of us who’ve followed the EU issue for decades know that British politicians regularly attempt reform in the EU, and regularly retire hurt.  The EU is beyond reform, and deserves to be put out of its misery.  But it’s doubly naïve of our Prime Minister to imagine that a few obliging words from Hollande will seal the deal.  The EU has its own agenda and its own Juggernaut momentum.  The only way in which Cameron might hope to achieve change is to brandish Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.  Set out our intention to quit, and then let them propose terms to keep us in.

Cameron seems to be set on spending a great deal of our money on promoting political objectives which, as anyone could tell him, are simply unachievable.  He is becoming a liability.

The EU’s Ring of Stars (or Crown of Thorns)

There’s been an outbreak of Euroscepticism in the Tory party — or at least we could say that the firmly-held conviction of most party members and activists has once again broken through the arrogance, hubris and indifference of the leadership.  The reason for this is not hard to find — stark panic at the advances of UKIP in the County Council Elections, in the opinion polls and in the media.  Even Tory MPs who were not known as sceptics are panicked about their prospects in 2015.

But in the party’s querulous mood, some of the sceptic voices have tempered their position by arguing that “Leaving the EU won’t solve all our problems!” — as if anyone ever said that it would.  Consider the journey they’ve come on so far.  They inhabited a world where leaving the EU was the province of cranks, gadflies, clowns and closet racists.  Now, the idea that we will benefit from leaving has become so mainstream, after interventions from Lords Lawson, Lamont and Forsyth, from Boris Johnson and Michael Portillo, that some are feeling moved to warn that “Brexit”, though now desirable, is not a universal panacea.

Surprising.  Nevertheless, we have Boris warning that many of our problems are home-made. There is powerful if anecdotal evidence of a reluctance to engage in serious work amongst British young people, a sense of entitlement, a failure to benefit from state education, even a failure of the state education system (though Michael Gove is doughtily battling the regressive teachers’ unions to drag education screaming into the 21st Century).  Boris of course has a point: he should recall Simon Heffer’s famous comment: “We have an underclass because we have decided to pay for one”.

Then we have Dominic Raab, who has been one of the clearest sceptic voices amongst the Tories, arguing that “You can’t blame Brussels for Britain’s debts”. Well maybe not, Dominic, though if you think that Tim Congdon’s estimate of the real total costs of Britain’s EU membership is anything like right, at £150 bn a year, leaving the EU would be a massive help with our debt problems.

But all this is to miss the key point, which is that while leaving the EU would not solve all of Britain’s problems, it is the single most significant thing we could do to promote growth and competitiveness, to relieve regulatory obstacles to enterprise, to control energy prices, to control our borders, and above all to return democracy and self-government to the British people.

At the weekend we had Ed Miliband telling us that the voter doesn’t really care too much about “Europe”.  She cares about jobs, and immigration, and the cost of living — as though those issues were wholly unrelated to the EU.

We should not be surprised when the son of a noted Hampstead Marxist makes this elementary error, but it really is more worrying to find Benedict Brogan doing the same.  He says “The (Conservative) party is divided on an issue that scarcely one in ten lists as a priority“. Benedict, you need to get out more.  In particular, you need to go and talk to voters on the doorstep, as I have, whether in Labour Rotherham, or Lib-Dem Eastleigh, or the leafy Tory Sires of my East Midlands region.

You’d find that voters care about jobs, about living costs and food prices, about energy prices and fuel poverty.  They care about immigration.  Many of them care about the march of wind turbines across our green and pleasant land.  And every one of those issues is directly and adversely affected by our EU membership.

On any realistic estimate around three quarters of our new legislation comes from Brussels, and Westminster acts as little more than a rubber stamp.  This surely brings to mind Tolkien’s Middle Earth: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them”.

It is overwhelmingly Brussels that controls broad swathes of our legislation and our public life, to our great detriment.  The reason that voters rate “Europe” way down their list of priorities is that, intentionally or otherwise, our politicians have chosen to conceal (or at least not to make clear) the extent to which we’ve surrendered control of our own affairs.  It is the historic rôle of UKIP to let that cat out of the bag.  I find that the more I tell voters about the EU, the angrier they get.

P.S.  I’ve just noticed that in my nice picture of the EU flag, above, culled from a Guardian web-site, the flag is shown upside-down!

It’s quite extraordinary to see the contortions into which Cameron has got his Party over the John Baron amendment “regretting” the lack of an EU referendum Bill in the Queen’s Speech. First Downing Street was reportedly “relaxed” about Tory MPs — and Tory cabinet ministers — supporting the amendment.  It was even suggested, improbably, that Cameron himself might support it.  But the latest position is that Ministers (and PPS’s — the whole payroll vote) are being “advised” to abstain if they can’t bring themselves to oppose it.

In some circles the current fix is described as a “constitutional inanity”.  How could government ministers vote against their own programme?  I think this problem is exaggerated.  As Ministers in a Coalition, Tories may recognised that they are unable to do some things they would like to do.  They can surely omit a measure that Nick Clegg would have disallowed, but later regret that they were obliged to do so?  To insist on taking the concept of joint cabinet responsibility to its limit would suggest that Tory ministers cannot publicly disagree with Nick Clegg, which would be absurd.

Cameron is surely setting himself up for more embarrassment.  I should think that several — perhaps rather a lot — of the payroll vote will conclude that they cannot in all conscience vote against the amendment.  If Cameron disciplines them, his backbenchers, activists and members will be furious.  If he does not, he’ll look impotent.

Let’s remember that this is a Prime Minister who whipped his troops to vote against an EU referendum last time round.  This time, he’s reluctantly (and confusingly) calling on the payroll vote to abstain.  Under pressure from UKIP, he’s promised an EU referendum — this year, next year, sometime, never? — but he’s also said he’ll fight “tooth and nail” to keep Britain in the EU.  And he broke his previous “cast iron” referendum guarantee.  So much for our “Eurosceptic” Prime Minister.

Ed Miliband has hardly covered himself in glory.  Yesterday he said Labour would not offer a referendum (I was on BBC Radio Five Live talking about it last night).  He argued that voters were concerned about jobs and the cost of living, not the finer points of European Treaties.  Yet again he shows himself either ignorant or dishonest (perhaps both), since EU costs and regulation are damaging prosperity and job prospects, while EU policies drive up food and energy costs.  We can see the cost of EU membership every time we open an electricity bill.  Miliband might as well say that householders are worried about flooding, so we shouldn’t be talking to them about rain, or drainage.

Miliband no doubt thinks his clear stand on the issue will be contrasted favourably with Cameron’s ducking and weaving.  But he’s on the wrong side of political tactics, and the wrong side of history.  The referendum genie is out of the bottle, and he can’t put it back.  In just a year’s time, Miliband will be looking at the results of the 2014 euro-elections.  In all probability, UKIP will top the poll.  And if Labour is still holding out against an EU referendum, they may do rather badly.  Certainly if Labour goes in to the 2015 General Election still opposed to a referendum, they will lose.

Meantime the Lib-Dem position is interesting.  Nick Clegg remains on-message, still repeating the lie that “Three million British jobs depend on our EU membership”.  He knows this is not true, but the Lib-Dems have never been sticklers for accuracy.  But Vince Cable is moving to distance himself from Nick’s hard line.  “I think that is putting it in too extreme a way”.  What’s changed Vince’s mind? A change of heart?  Leadership ambitions? Electoral arithmetic?  Whatever it is, he seems a little closer to reality than Clegg.

But the fundamental reason why an EU referendum is on the agenda; why Tory backbenchers (including some who are not the “usual suspects”, but are terrified of losing their seats); why Tory activists are baying for action; why even Vince Cable is shifting his stance, is quite simply pressure from UKIP, and our amazing results in the local elections.  A UKIP vote is a wasted vote?  Of course not.  We’re setting the agenda and driving the debate.  Without a seat in Westminster (yet), we’re making the political weather.

One of the advantages of a long-haul flight is the chance to sit down and read.  On a recent flight, I picked up a copy of Super Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner, the sequel to their hugely successful Freakonomics.  Promoted under the tag-line “A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything”, these books apply the techniques of statistics and economics to a range of human behaviours, sometimes in a very quirky way indeed.

Super Freakonomics, for example, shows why a suicide bomber should take out life insurance.  And why the EU’s decision to raise the age below which children must use a car booster seat is pointless and irrational (but what did they expect from the EU?).

There’s an excellent chapter on global warming.  Sadly the authors buy into the underlying proposition of climate alarmism — that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and just might cause dangerous climate change.  There I (and UKIP) disagree with them.  But they also look at our current policies to “fight climate change”, and conclude, rightly, that they are both futile and wasteful.  Bang on the button, guys.  Al Gore, the EU and the IPCC are making the most expensive gesture in the whole history of gesture politics — and of the human race.

The authors make another rather less general point, which I have heard made before, but bears repeating.  The government, through the electricity utilities, has been offering eye-watering subsidies on solar PV.  Eagle-eyed readers of this blog (with long memories) will recall that I have written several times about my own domestic solar PV system, which pays me, as a subsidy, on every unit of electricity generated, many times the cost of generating the same unit of electricity in a proper power station.

Levitt and Dubner point out that solar panels are black, and black objects absorb radiation rather well.  But the panels turn only about 12% of the incident energy into heat.  What happens to the rest, ask Levitt & Dubner?  Why it heats the panel and is radiated into the atmosphere.  (To be fair, the panels are also shiny, and some of the incident sunlight is probably reflected — but the panels do get warm).  It is quite possible that rather than mitigating climate change (on the orthodox theory), solar panels are adding to it!  If you believe the IPCC theory, you’d probably do more for the planet by painting your roof white than by putting solar panels on it.

But then, no one will offer you a subsidy for painting your roof white.

Back in October, I published UKIP’s Energy Policy Statement, warning that “the lights could go out by 2020″.  Many people thought I was being alarmist.  But a new report from analysts at Liberum Capital, a London-based investment bank, suggests that I may have been underplaying the threat.  They foresee a generation capacity crunch in 2014/2017, with a lack of dispatchable generation by the end of the decade, together with spiralling consumer costs which they describe as “untenable”. Find the full report. There’s also a more comprehensive summary on the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s web-site.

Key conclusions:

There will be an inevitable crisis in UK energy policy, which will impact three stakeholders: the government of the day; the consumer; and the investors who have funded the programme.  Government will do its best to protect itself and consumers, so investors will take most of the damage.

UK Energy policy is not plausible: moving to a low-carbon electricity generating system by 2030 may simply be impossible.

Costs are excessive: Estimates £161 bn to 2020 and £376 bn by 2030.

Economic rationale looks weak: This is in effect a huge bet on oil futures.  It’s predicated on massive price rises in fossil fuels.  But that assumption is undermined by the rapid growth of unconventional gas and oil.

Policy amounts to re-nationalisation: risks and costs will be transferred to the public.  We in UKIP believe that the risk should remain with the private sector, but this would require much more long-term regulatory certainty than is available today.

Triggers for the crisis: capacity crunch 2014/17; lack of dispatchable generation by the end of the decade; spiralling costs.

For a more extensive summary, see the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Liberum concludes that utility companies and investors should limit their exposure.  I conclude that the EU should scrap its Climate & Energy Package, and that the British government should focus on gas, nuclear and coal, and abandon its unpopular and disastrous commitment to wind energy.

Tory MP Bernard Jenkin is a good guy, and genuinely wants to do the right thing.  It’s just a shame that he’s in the wrong party.

Of course the Tories post-last-Thursday are terrified of the rise and rise of UKIP (we’re on a roll, guys!)   And Bernard genuinely wants to claw back powers from Brussels (he still thinks we can).  So he’s come up with the idea of a “Mandate Referendum” in this parliament, perhaps as early as next May (Geddit?  Alongside the euro-elections!) — and he’s got twenty of his mates to sign up.

The idea is that the question would be, broadly speaking, “Do you agree that the government should negotiate with the EU for the repatriation of powers?”

How should we in UKIP respond?  My first instinct is to say NO!  We want an In/Out referendum.  We don’t want a renegotiation at all, and we don’t believe it can work.  It’s just a delaying tactic. The last thing we want to do is to vote to endorse the Tory renegotiation policy, which we know is doomed to failure.  So we should call for a boycott, or a NO vote.

But on mature reflection, I think that would be a mistake.  First, because we’ve been calling for an EU referendum, and we’ve been castigating Cameron for promising a referendum and failing to deliver.  The voters would simply not understand it if, after all that, we should oppose an EU referendum on what they would see, wrongly perhaps, as a technicality or a weasel.

Second, because I would expect such a referendum to be passed by a substantial majority, whatever we do.  At a time when we’re in the ascendant, we don’t want to position ourselves as losers on the wrong side of history.

So I think we should do a number of things.  First of all, we should make it clear that that we think the government is on the wrong course, and should offer an In/Out referendum.  Secondly, we should press for the government (or the Tory Party) to tell us what they will be demanding, and what their red lines are.  How can we vote for repatriation of powers if we don’t know which powers?  In this way, we raise the bar as high as possible — confident that any concessions Brussels may offer will be nugatory, and the renegotiation will fail

But third, and most important, we want to send a very strong, unified British message to Brussels: “Membership of the EU on today’s terms is just plain unacceptable to the British people”.  So we should call for a Yes vote, while making it clear that it’s the wrong question.

Then, when 80% vote yes, we may have negotiated Cameron into a position where a future Conservative government, after a failed renegotiation, is forced to hold an In/Out vote with a NO recommendation.  We will have helped to convince the Brussels institutions and politicians that Britain will have to leave, and cannot accept membership on any terms they would agree to.  And we will have put huge pressure on any in-coming Labour government not to go along with business-as-usual in the EU.

We know that the average voter doesn’t have too much patience with the small print.  It’s an EU referendum, and we’ll have voted against the status quo.  That will turn out to be a victory for UKIP, not a victory for the Tories.