I suppose there's going to be a lot of crowing about how Gordon Brown's failure to get energy companies to pony up £1bn worth of fuel vouchers for the least well-off. Certainly Brown has some serious problems with his, um, capacity to persuade (things are bad when I agree with classics-my-arse Clarke).

But on this occasion I'm not so sure that his failings are all that bad a thing. The government has an opportunity now to really think about a long-term energy policy. And I think that taxes can do some of the heavy lifting for consumers here. Instead of taxing on profit, we should tax energy companies based on how energy efficient or inefficient their customers are so that companies would have a huge incentive to focus on their customers' energy efficiency.