The Government's energy efficiency rating scheme is simply not fit-for-purpose. The Telegraph has run many stories telling us how the method of calculation is unclear, the ratings almost random, the assessors close to carpet-baggers - to the point where even the supposedly clever Gove acknowledges significant problems. How can Gove allow himself to enforce laws and regulations which are literally incomprehensible because the requirements cannot be rationally anticipated? Inevitably, much money will be wasted as investment is mis-allocate investment on a vast scale.

English landlords are now trapped in an 'Alice in Wonderland' world where they are legally required to achieve a 'C' rating without it being possible to understand what is required to achieve this. Does the Government seriously expect this not to cause rents to rise to cover the cost and/or the withdrawal of private landlords from a market where they can no longer make an adequate return?

And the Opposition is even more deluded and economically illiterate: Sadiq Khan is demanding a rent-freeze. Does he not know that every rent-freeze in history produces - in time, but often very quickly - exactly the same result. The supply of available accommodation dries up, creating a rapidly growing disconnect between supply and demand. The rental market is soon split into the 'legal but uneconomic' and the 'economic but illegal', resulting in massively damaging economic and social dislocation. (The Germans faced with identical pressures recently tried it in Berlin only quickly to abandon it when they saw the consequences.)

Heat pumps, so-called smart meters (actually they aren't very smart and are already obsolete last-generation tech), solar panels, insulation etc, are all delivered by the market if they make sense. When people and business do not freely choose to do things, when you have to resort to compulsion and prohibit certain technologies, it is a sure sign that you shouldn't being doing this - the same of course applies to EVs.

I believe that the first duty of politicians and officials is to deliver security and the second - which is always required for security truly to be secure - is for plans to be affordable, ideally delivering prosperity.

All I have heard so far about Net Zero in the UK and the EU is that it does exactly the opposite: too much of the required technology is not yet developed or unproven at the necessary scale; too much of it is disproportionately expensive or, as yet, unaffordable if we are not to damage our living standards. And it is always the poorest, the just about getting by, the lower skilled and low paid who suffer the most.

The entire political class 'buys in' to Net Zero, simply ignoring practicality and 'do-ability'. The entire UK elite has enshrined 'Net Zero' targets in law to be achieved through restrictions, prohibitions and new taxes - and this without telling us how we can do it without impoverishing ourselves, losing long-standing freedoms, decimating our quality of life

I can think of nothing more self-destructively irresponsible, and a greater betrayal of the ordinary people who elect them.

I, therefore, hope standing as the UK Libertarian Party's London mayoral candidate will give me at least some opportunity to tell the voters of London how, under the guise of 'Net Zero' and saving the planet, the UK's political class and all the established party candidates are stealing their and their children's future prosperity and quality of life, and thus delivering our future to other Continents like North America and east Asia.