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This morning we had from the government another U-turn, this time on a windfall tax on the utility companies.

Except that the minister who was doing the rounds, Jacob Rees-Mogg, had clearly been told,

whatever you do, don't admit that that is the case.

So befuddle, bewilder instead, with the most heavily tossed word salad you're ever going to hear.

What has happened in the renewables market in recent years,

there has been a move away from prices based on the gas price to contracts for difference.

This is something that the market has asked for, has welcomed and is enthusiastic about.

What is being done now is to move the contracts that are

gas-based onto contracts for difference with the power to intervene in the process of doing that

whilst the discussions are going on to allow it to be done in an orderly and timely way.

So that's all clear then. Keep up. Come on. I was racking my brain trying to think what that syntax reminded me of.

And for all their disregard of the civil service, actually, Jacob Rees-Mogg sounds like the spitting image of Sir Humphrey from yes minister.

The traditional allocation of executive responsibilities

has always been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent

from the administrative minutiae

by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications.

We had a government minister insisting that the actions of the government

bore no bearing on what had happened to the markets

and that it was all basically the fault of the Bank of England.

This is a man who is way steep in an Egyptian river denial.

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