The new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point, which has finally been approved by EDF’s board, will be the most expensive power station anywhere in the world. Beset by delays (first proposed in 2006, it was meant to come online in 2017), it won’t be operational until 2025 and EDF will still receive its enormous £30bn subsidy even if Hinkley generates nothing until 2029.

Some were hoping the new government would junk the project and instead shore up UK energy security by incentivising a constellation of lower-cost, smaller schemes. But despite the unexpected delay in approving the scheme, the signs are that the energy secretary will persist with George Osborne’s nuclear folly, locking consumers into massively higher prices for decades.

Hinkley highlights a significant problem with Theresa May’s renewed focus on industrial strategy, essentially a greater role for the state in guiding the economy. Politicians will pursue schemes beyond the limits of reason, first, because they’re betting with other people’s money, but also because of a lack of imagination about the alternatives and a hope that the prestige of such grand projects will somehow rub off on them.

David Fuller's view

I am disappointed with the Hinkley Point approval, not because of China’s involvement or the French EU connection, but because everything that we have seen so far with similar projects on Finland’s Olkiluoto Island and France’s own Flamanville project on the Cotentin Peninsula, has been woeful to date, including absurdly expensive. 

(See: Britain Should Leap-Frog Hinkley and Lead 21^st Century Nuclear Revolution, plus my comments)