The fracking argument is not going away, with alarmist Nick Herbert stirring up trouble today by claiming it is the ‘biggest threat to countryside after housing’. Last week Labour jumped on Lord Howell’s comment that it should take place in “large and uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly in part of the North East”. He was forced to apologise for apparently suggesting anywhere in Labour’s northern strongholds could possibly be desolate. So surely none of their MPs would ever make such a suggestion?

Well, as revealed in yesterday’s Sun column, apart from Shadow Minister for Climate Change Luciana Berger who invited a Minister to visit Liverpool last year to see “the desolate sites”. Or the multi-millionaire left-wing firebrand MP Michael Meacher who claimed in April that “communities across the north were laid waste” and “many of those communities are still desolated today”. Or Leeds MP George Mudie who once said “my constituency, it is desolate.” Or another Labour millionaire Geoffrey Robinson who said his Coventry seat “has become derelict. People do not eat there socially, congregate there or spend time there. It is desolate.” Or what about Labour grandee Tony Benn who once declared “the truth is that whole areas of the country have been laid desolate”. What the frack…