Theresa May's Great Frack And Rule Swindle

Kicking off on Brexit, May said the Leave vote had been above all else a response to decades of government failure to listen to the concerns of Joe and Jo Q Public – a mistake she committed to rectify.

“The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the rich and powerful, but by the interests of ordinary, working class people,” she claimed, draping sheep’s clothing over the most wolfishly right wing authoritarian Cabinet in my lifetime.

A wardrobe scam laid bare the following morning when, in defiance of every public consultation and local authority decision informed by same, Communities Minister Sajid Javid sided with rich and powerful fracking companies and forced the industry on Lancashire. Well, I say people. Guinea pigs, now.

A case study in how a hugely pollutive process hitherto confined largely to vast tracts of sparsely inhabited hinterland – notably in the US – will play out in a small but populous county.

How will Lancashire cope with millions of gallons of mildly radioactive water filthy with chemicals and heavy metals bubbling up from subterranea? Is there capacity to cleanse the stuff? In the US, water they are unable to reprocess is released into streams, stored in deep wells, the only saving grace, if pollution has any ‘saving grace’, being the remoteness of such activity.

How will the water get wherever it ends up? How many lorry miles? How much spillage must Lancashire tolerate?

We’ll see. Indeed, we’ve a front row seat. Also seeing on Thursday morning, nationwide, was every local authority with a fracking application on its patch and a local population broadly opposed to same. Westminster’s message is unambiguous. Go ahead. Consult the public. Have open meetings. Debate. Invest money and resources in conducting a fair and open democratic process.

Then approve the bids or we will slap you down. Budgets decimated all over, many councils will grimly grasp the futility of resistance and simply roll over before the drill.

In this matter, despite the PM’s fine words, her Government listens only to those who say what it wants to hear.