Plans unveiled at the party conference in Manchester to tackle energy efficiency are a major step towards state intervention, and rightly so
I am renationalising you all tomorrow, Caroline Flint told the assembled industry at the Energy UK party on Tuesday night. The joke prompted nervous laughter. The industry, which has excoriated Labours pledge to freeze energy bills, is having to play nice now the Labour party could be in office in eight months time.
But boozy late nights in the Stanley suite of the Midland Hotel can be the place for the revelation of true intentions. A year before, in the same room, Conservative energy minister Michael Fallon responded to a heckle to abandon the UKs binding carbon targets by saying: It would be my luck to scrap them.