Sky News reports on UK PM Sir Keir Starmer's 'messaging' from the Energy Summit in London:

He used part of his speech to send a message to Vladimir Putin, saying Russia must never be able to "blackmail" Europe on energy.

"Until Russia comes to the table and agrees a full and unconditional ceasefire, we must continue to crack down on their energy revenues which are still fuelling Putin's war chest," he said.

Russia has been supplying energy to Europe - especially Germany - for decades, and stlll does through various loopholes despite the sanctions. Hungary can't manage without it.

Without Russian energy the German export economy could not have grown the way it did. Now it has to rely on green energy and US fracked LPG to plug the gap. The results are quite obvious as the German economy hits the skids and the electorate questions their leaders.

So the claim that Russia is 'blackmailing' Europe on energy is simply nonsense.

Especially after someone blew up Nordstream 2. The MSM initially tried to blame it on Russia. But that was an Addison de Witt level of preposterous allegation that was soon totally debunked.

Why would Russia blow up their own pipeline that they had invested billions in when all they needed to was turn off the spigot at their end?

If Europe does not want Russian energy then don't buy it.

US Senator John McCain infamously said: Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. It was supposed to be an insult but it turns out that it's pretty handy to be one of the world's largest gas stations when everyone else needs gas.

Plenty of other buyers can be found, even if it means dropping the price for a while, until such time as oil and gas has genuinely been succeeded by something else: Hydrogen, nuclear fission, magnetism or whatever.

The truth is that Europe turned away from Russian energy so Russia turned away from Europe. It's called a pivot.

But this is what Starmer calls 'blackmail'.

He's a lawyer by trade but doesn't seem to have a clue what blackmail actually means. How can Russia blackmail Europe if they don't want 'dirty' Russian energy, which they say they don't?

Lest we forget...Europe, and especially the 'my word is my bond' bowler-hat gents of the City of London, was happy to launder billions of 'dirty' Russian money in the past before they got all ethical about it after the coup in Ukraine.

Russia can and does sell plenty of oil and gas to China, India, North Korea and others. So where is the detail on how Starmer and the 'coalition of the willing' is going to stop these 'war chest' sales, which is where all the money really comes from?

Are we going to bomb these guys too, like Belgrade, or Palmerston-style send a Royal Navy gunboat to take on the Chinese navy?

And doesn't he realise that demanding a 'full and unconditional ceasefire' from Russia today is like the Germans demanding the same thing in 1945 from the ruins of Berlin. It would have been laughable then and it's laughable now.

Especially as this time around, unlike in WW2, the UK has left the hard fighting to the Ukrainians and simply hid behind the USA while training Ukrainian troops and supplying weapons to kill Russians. Does he even think about what he is saying?

You've got to wonder what exactly these politicians are smoking.