As we’ve noted before a windfall tax on supply at a time of dearth really isn’t the way to do about things. We might even have muttered words like “idiocy” and “insane”. The reason being, of course, that we’d rather like people to have the incentives to build out the industry. Create supply that will only be called upon at some time of dearth - say, when some other part of the supply chain falls out of the system - and that requires those super-profits to be available if that infrastructure is only going to be used occasionally.

So that’s our first marvel at political logic - the taxation of the very thing which would, if untaxed, reduce the likelihood or severity of any future dearth.

We’ve also noted that if the green-eyed God is indeed to be allowed her due, if super-profits just must be taxed because of jealousy, then it should be all such profits in the sector which are taxed. Not just fossil fuel profits, but wind, solar, biofuel and so on. For all have been making those super-profits and it’s those super-profits which are the justification for the tax. Which brings us to this:

Electricity generated by wind farms and nuclear power plants could be exempted from a proposed windfall tax on energy firms following a backlash over the plans, The Telegraph can disclose.

Why?

But a Whitehall source said analysis of companies’ profits has shown a “wildly different picture” depending on the individual firm and source of energy.

Restricting a new tax to profits yielded from electricity generated by gas and coal would avoid “impacting sectors of the economy where we need hundreds of billions of pounds of investment”, the source added.

That’s the argument against having a windfall tax at all. That’s also an argument in favour of having a windfall tax that doesn’t raise any tax revenue at all.

Think on it. Electricity generation from fossil fuels (almost entirely gas, there’s very little coal used and almost no oil) is very much more expensive now because the price of gas has risen. So, generation from fossil fuels doesn’t make any excess profits - they’re at the level of the fossil fuel companies, not the generating ones. There aren’t any fossil fuel generating excess profits to tax.

There are electricity generating excess profits to tax - at those companies that don’t use fossil fuels to do their generating. So, to tax the fossil fuel generators raises nothing, while leaving the excess profits untouched. Which obviates the very point of any windfall tax, justified as it is not by reason but that jealousy of people making excess profits.

But then this is the basic problem with using politics to run things. It doesn’t run on logic it relies upon emotion. Well, we hope that’s the reason because we’d be really worried if people trying to use logic came up with the above plan.