Britain faces an energy crisis. Will the lights go out just as the Cop26 climate conference begins?
Dark days loom – perhaps literally – as Britain’s energy situation moved from a “squeeze” to a “crisis” over the weekend, rising swiftly through the gears of journalistic alarm.
You can hang around in the crisis classification for quite some time, of course, and there’s debate as to what the next gear is formally termed. But Monday saw Kwasi Kwarteng sweep in to insist it wasn’t “three-day week” or “winter of discontent”. Far from it, was the business secretary’s message from the dispatch box. If anything, it was going to be a winter of content. So much content – unless, of course, we get a prolonged cold season. No one wants a cold winter less than the government, with the possible exception of the UK hedgehog population or the Daily Telegraph subscriptions department.
