In many ways the decision to award President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is a strange decision.

I am an enormous admirer of the new US President and delighted with many of the changes in the US stance on a wide range of topics that have been initiated in his first few months in office.  But so far these are all changes of stance.  They have yet to be translated into solid achievements.  I hope they will be.

However, to quote former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”  Obama is of course now governing, but his foreign policy initiatives are still by and large at the campaign stage.  Making things happen is genuinely difficult; wishing for them is easier.

Thus, the Nobel citation stresses his “vision”, the “new climate” he is creating whereby “dialogue and negotiation” are the preferred instruments for resolving conflicts, and the “more constructive role” that the USA is taking on climate change.  The citation is right that all of these are a breath of fresh air and potentially set a new direction with a values-based approach to global issues.

Capitalising on this new direction and achieving sustainable solutions to these global issues, however, necessarily remains a long way off.  Normally, the Nobel Prize is awarded for a “result” or at the very least tangible progress – for example, US President Woodrow Wilson’s award in 1919 celebrated the achievements that had led to the formation of the League of Nations (even if the US Congress then declined to allow the USA to join).

Presumably, the intention of the award to Obama is to encourage other World Leaders to follow his lead.  I hope it succeeds, but I am not sure that that is the proper purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Consecutive days’ editions of the Evening Standard have highlighted a split in the Tory party on airport policy in London.

Yesterday, the Tories said no more runways for London airports.  Indeed, a manifesto commitment was promised to scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow with an added pledge that there would be no expansion at Gatwick or Stansted.

This sparked cynical remarks that  (perish the thought) the Conservatives were eying Labour-held marginals on the Heathrow flightpath.

Today, we hear (from the same reporter) that, in fact, billions of pounds have been pledged by oil-rich countries and China to build a brand-new additional airport in the Thames Estuary.

I understand there are no relevant marginals in the flightpath of the proposed new airport.

So yesterday’s arguments were nothing about climate change or high principle: it was just about votes.

It appears that nine Wiltshire Councillors (six Conservatives, two Independents and one Liberal Democrat) are living on the Planet Zog and are trying to persuade the rest of the Council to join them there.

They have put down a motion calling on the Council to withdraw its support for the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change – a declaration supported by the vast majority of English local councils.

They are not doing this because they believe that such declarations are not worth the paper they are written on unless they are backed up by real actions.  Nor are they doing it because they feel that Wiltshire is failing to do enough to merit being a signatory.

Their reasons are apparently that they believe that the Declaration itself is “contentious, unreasonable and ultimately damaging” and that the idea that climate change is man-made is “founded on the sand of uncertainty” and relies on “the unproven significance” of man-made greenhouse gas emissions in determining climate.

It remains to be seen what their colleagues on the Council will make of this, but I suspect – despite the eco-friendly noises made by the Party Leadership – this is a fair reflection of what the Conservative Party (or at least its grassroots element) really believes.

The Conservative Party in Europe has already linked itself to the Planet Zog fraternity by leaving the EPP Grouping (already a pretty broad Church).  Here is more evidence of a Party occupied by Zog dwellers.