Loony Huhnes

"New green economy will counter oil prices" reads the headline of an article in Public Service on Huhne's unveiling of a new "Carbon Plan", by which Britain will confirm its world leadership in the race to the bottom of the international competitiveness league.

Houyhnhnm never disappoints. Just when you think he cannot get more detached from reality, he fires the boosters and reaches new heights of folly. Greensturbatory rhetoric aside, the imbecile announced the following tasks for government departments:

HM Treasury will have to legislate to create a floor in the carbon price by April 2011. The Department for the Environment and Climate Change (DECC) will have to award the contract for the first UK carbon capture and storage demonstration by end of this year and identify more demonstration projects by May 2012. The Department for Business must get the Green Investment Bank operational by September 2012 with the first annual data released on the funds in and size of investments made by the bank by May 2013. And the Department for Transport must "develop a nationwide strategy" to push ahead with more use of electric cars and other transport.

Houyhnhnm appears to be unaware that the Treasury cannot legislate. It's an easy mistake for an EU fanboy to make, as of course there's none of that democratic nonsense about the pronouncements of the unelected European Commission. But even if the Treasury could legislate, precisely how would it "set a floor in the carbon price"?

What he means, of course, is that the Treasury must come up with a figure for what carbon is supposedly costing the planet in order to make the rest of his initiatives seem cost-effective. So, it's failed in Europe, been abandoned in Chicago, but - sound of trumpets - it's going to work in Britain, because it's so well run by brilliant politicians and officials who are the wonder of the world.

The asylum has been taken over by the lunatics. Because greenery is the only thing binding the Coalition together, Houyhnhnm and Co. are going to be permitted to make Gordon Brown seem like the wise and prudent steward of the nation's economy he always believed himself to be.