Donald Trump’s tendency to exaggerate and make up figures as he goes along is for some people a symptom of the ‘post-truth society’. But for the president himself it is a useful rhetorical tool which helps draws attention to things which might otherwise get less of an airing.

Yes, it is a gross exaggeration to say, as Trump did in his speech at Davos yesterday, that Britain has ‘500 years’ worth of oil in the North Sea. The trouble for his critics, though, is that the essential point he was making – which is that Britain is denying itself valuable energy resources in the shorter term, to the detriment of the economy and national resilience – is rather harder to deny. By making a fanciful assertion, Trump has helped expose an equal fib: that the North Sea is depleted to the extent that it is not worth drilling there any more, other than to lay the foundations for offshore wind farms.

We are forced to import resources which we could be producing ourselves

First, the figures. The North Sea Transition........

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