Yesterday was supposed to be the day the nuclear button was finally pressed – a vote by the board of French energy company EDF to go ahead with Hinkley C power station was assumed to be the moment at which the project would finally spring off the drawing board. Instead, business secretary Greg Clark announced that he needed until September to make a final decision on the government’s behalf.
He is to be commended for not being pushed into the go-ahead. Hinkley – along with Heathrow and HS2 – is one of three ‘Hs’ bequeathed by the Cameron-Osborne years: hugely expensive infrastructure projects seemingly frustrated by chronic indecision. How tempting it would be for Clark to have nodded it through – giving the general impression that Britain means business and that from now on will not be held back by bureaucratic bumbling.
But it would have been a terrible decision.
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