Question Time takes advantage of senile old man

I’ve missed almost all of the current series of Question Time, so tonight I was determined to watch it. For now, you can too, as tonight’s programme should be available online, but the BBC have previously proved bad at maintaining their archive.

Julia Goldsworthy (only third place? Your readers are mad, Stephen!) was pretty good, but hamstrung by being sat next to a bumptious buffoon (see below). Francis Maude was incredibly dull. Boris Berezovsky was interesting during the first half of the programme, which was devoted to Russia. And Melanie Philips was the token Daily Mail journalist, there to stir the pot on the far right (“I’m afraid I am one of that strange breed of people who are actually not persuaded of the man-made global warming theory at all.”)

To stir the pot on the far left, however, was Tony Benn, and he stood out from the crowd as singly the most bone-headed panellist that David Dimbleby could possibly have found. In just one hour, he managed to accuse Britain of locking up Nelson Mandela, suggested that Britain should not seek to extradite Andrei Lugovoi over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko lest it upset the Russians, and suggested that the Russians might fear the fairness of British justice because of Guantanamo Bay (which is, as some of my more sharp-eyed readers may have noticed, on a different continent from either of the protagonists in this case).

His most ignorant and facile point, however, was in opposition to carbon trading. He argued that the issue of greenhouse gasses was one of rationing, and that carbon trading was the equivalent of selling the single loaf of bread in a lifeboat to the highest bidder (“so that the rich gobble it up”). He catagorically opposed “marketing of ration books” and insisted that we share the right to emit carbon. This is both economically-illiterate and dangerous, but it is typical of a man who believes that governments are best placed to distribute both rights and wealth from on high.

In fact, carbon trading is the only means of ensuring that the right to emit a limited amount of carbon is distributed most efficiently. Most efficiently does not mean equally, of course; Benn may on the face of it be an egalitarian, but human progress depends on the efficient use of carbon, not its equal distribution. If we were each given our ration of carbon-emissions and banned from trading them – as was the equivalent during the 1940s and 1950s when the War coaliton and then the Labour government rationed food and banned its trade – those desparate to emit carbon would be restricted from doing so, while others with no particular need would be endowed with a largely useless permit.

A much fairer system, and one that would generate far more wealth for everybody, would see the government selling the credits, so that those that valued them most could secure them. We would all benefit from the money raised, which could be spent on establishing carbon sinks, buidling alternative energy infrastructure, or researching other solutions to global warming (or, for that matter, spent on health, education, or handed out to citizens as a form of dividend).

Anyway, it is likely to be primary polluters who need credits, rather than end-users. As long as the manufacturers of electricity and petrol and aviation fuel have to buy credits, our carbon emissions will be priced into our electricity bills, the cost of driving and the price of our holidays. This is a far fairer and more efficient means of distributing the right to emit carbon than government rationing. Bear in mind that rationing stretched well into the 1950s because governments, once endowed with the power, were reluctant to let it go. If you’re really worried about the poor, the solution is to enrich them and let them buy carbon-intensive goods alongside the rich.

Still, it should not be a surprise that Benn is confused, as he is clearly becoming senile. Only that can explain his daftest comment: that he is a libetarian. Tony Benn, the author of the “longest suicide note in history”, which would have arrogated more power to government than Britain had seen since the Stewarts, claimed to be a libertarian. The man’s clearly gone mad!