Alfred the Great supposedly burned his cakes at Bridgwater in Somerset. So it seems fitting the planned Hinkley Point nuclear power site is where contemporary political bridges may be burned, too.
If you believe the story going around Westminster, the collapse of the controversial reactor project, heavily backed by George Osborne, would end his campaign to take over at Number 10, given the recent tax credit U-turn and pension retreat.
But, however much the chancellor needs Hinkley, its fate will actually be decided not in Bridgwater, or London Bridge, but in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris: the headquarters of Électricité de France (EDF).
It is here that the future of the £18bn scheme, a main part of infrastructure strategy and the key to Conservative Party energy policy, will be decided once and for all.
Jean-Bernard Lévy, the EDF chief executive, is the man who is pushing for more financial help from the French government and to tie up a few more loose ends that would allow him, finally, to press the green button on Hinkley.
Friends of Lévy describe him as a “dictator overseeing a democracy” but the stakes are high for him, too. His job is surely on the line from François Hollande’s government, given Hinkley is meant to provide a French technology showcase.
Yet City analysts in Britain have described the project as “insane” for a company that is already buried in a host of other problems, most of which require solving with money it has not immediately got.
The temperature reached boiling point last week, when it was revealed that EDF’s own finance director, Thomas Piquemal, had resigned, saying Hinkley should be postponed for at least three years while more cash was raised.
Rarely has one energy project received so much attention in Britain and bystanders could be forgiven for thinking that the only thing that stands in the way of the lights going out is this one nuclear project.
But Hinkley would only provide 7% of the country’s electricity. If Lévy did finally plug the plug on Hinkley, rather than going ahead next month as his people indicate, it would be lights out for Osborne or Tory energy policy credibility, rather than UK plc.
It is certainly a sign of the extraordinary frenzy around Hinkley that some peers have been demanding that Swansea Bay tidal lagoon must be built as the government’s Plan B.
Swansea Bay is a fascinating project that would be good to push forward. But it is small – 320 megawatts compared to Hinkley’s 3,200MW – and is based on a largely untried technology, rather than half a century of experience in nuclear power.
It is also being undertaken by one entrepreneur, Mark Shorrock, and a doughty team whereas, for all its faults, EDF oversees a massive power empire and is 85%-owned by the French state.
There are other UK nuclear projects – planned by two different consortia, led by Toshiba and Hitachi. They would not fall over just because Hinkley bit the dust but they are further behind in planning and confidence would surely be badly damaged.
Plan B for the Conservatives would, undoubtedly, involve more fossil fuels – more gas-fired power stations – with all the implications for breaking the country’s carbon emission targets.
But the government has been trying to get power companies, such as Centrica, to build new gas plants by offering subsidies through the “capacity mechanism” and has so far failed.
Ministers, who have set their faces against subsidising onshore wind and quite a lot of solar, as well as dismantling energy efficiency schemes, would have to throw more cash at the gas power operators.
They might also finally realise what Andrew Adonis’s national infrastructure commission has realised: the answers partly lie in demand reduction, in interconnectors with those countries who have too much power, and technical innovation on storage.
In the meantime, the smell of burning comes again from Bridgwater.
Celtic tiger’s roar is more of a miaow
Irish economic growth in 2015 was a supersonic 7.8%, according to official figures, outpacing China, India, and every other developed economy in the world. What’s more, in the final quarter, moved up yet another gear, to a breakneck 9.2% growth rate. The Celtic Tiger is roaring again.
Except that it’s not, really. If it were, taoiseach Enda Kenny would be enjoying a bumper majority in the Dáil. Instead, he was booted out in last month’s election, following an ill-judged campaign around the message of “keep the recovery going”. Beyond Dublin, the response from the electorate was: “What recovery?”
Ireland’s Central Statistics Office is not making up the data. But the dubious behaviour of the multinationals that dominate Ireland’s economy render many of the figures meaningless.
Take the figure for “gross fixed capital formation”, which tells you how much an economy is investing. It rose by a huge 28.2% to €46bn in 2015, the chief reason why domestic demand in the Irish economy is powering ahead.
Yet, nearly all of that increase was down to the Irish subsidiaries of multinationals buying intellectual property from their own shell-company subsidiaries, usually in Bermuda or the Caymans. Ironically, they are hauling these “assets” into Ireland, the home of European tax piracy, ahead of an expected international clampdown on the offshore shell companies.
The headline export figures are just as bogus, argues economics blogger Michael Hennigan of Finfacts.ie, who says that around a third of these may merely be transfer pricing by multinationals.
An assessment of the real economy would note how Dublin’s restaurants and malls are packed, how the M50 is at bursting point and how office vacancies are plummeting. But it would also note that many rural towns remain deeply depressed, blighted by emigration and a still moribund property market.
Ireland’s recovery is real, but it’s not the poster-child for austerity some claim. Growth is probably running above 3%, maybe 5%. But 7.8%? Pure blarney.
What bonus season should really be like
When bonus season rolls around in the City of London, chatter around the watercooler – and later in the Square Mile’s historic drinking dens – turns to sports cars, exotic holidays and ski chalets.
At the John Lewis Partnership – owner of the famous department store chain and Waitrose supermarkets – excited staff at the flagship Oxford Street store spoke instead of paying off credit card debts and saving for a family holiday. Each year the staff gather at shops around the UK to hear what percentage of their salary they’ll be getting as a bonus.
This year’s 10% was the lowest in more than a decade but still the unbridled delight was palpable. One reason for this is that everyone gets the same proportion of salary. Instead of nervously measuring their success against what colleagues have got, John Lewis employees celebrate their windfall in an atmosphere of collective joy. That’s why they call it a partnership.