Having for months advocated a strong State stake in energy supply, I was pleased – if admittedly rather surprised – to see that Ofgem is now recommending exactly that. It’s almost as though it was recommending rolling up the unfettered free market system of liberalised energy and replacing it with the Central Electricity Generating Board. And about time too. Privatisation of gas in 1986 and electricity in 1989 certainly lowered prices, but at the expense of strategic long-term planning. Three consequences have followed from the wild marketising frenzy of the 1980s which are now seen even by the Energy Establishment to be lethal drawbacks. First, gas storage capacity when left to the market scarcely materialised , which left the UK with dangerously low reserves in cold snaps like the recent one and increasingly dependent on imported gas. Second, the disinterest in ownership of strategic national assets put the UK at the maercy of foreign power behemoths which again mattered at times of shortages and rationing when they would prioritise their own domestic consumers. And third, having sucked the short-term profits out of the industry, privatised companies are much less interested in investing to meet national energy supply targets.

So Ofgem, the High Priest of liberalised energy markets, now recognises that leaving it to companies to build enough new power stations and low-carbon forms of generation to guarantee energy supplies and reduce carbon emissions won’t work. Why? Because liberalised markets are characterised by volatile energy prices and short-term supply contracts. What a volte-face – like the Pope suddenly realising that Catholicism isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Ofgem acknowledges that the level of investment required to stop the light going out is about £200bn by 2020, yet only a fraction of that investment has been made and by 2020 we’ll still be massively short. This is a moment of revelation like that now driving the reforms to stop the banks ever going bust again in a financial crisis. Neo-liberal ideological dogma is being cast aside, and common-sense and a new world order beckons. Like the banks, the railways, the car industry, the energy industry is calling on the State for help. Now’s the chance for the State to seize the agenda and lay the foundations for a new green secure energy system.

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