The FT's Nick Butler has added to the chorus of condemnation of government energy policy. His article is almost as good as the Liberum Capital briefing last week, and suggests that the whole policy is close to collapse:
The problems facing the Government’s plan to reform the UK’s electricity market go well beyond the departure of two of the limited number of civil servants who actually understand the proposals. The reality is that the Government is losing its appetite for a scheme which is liable to disintegrate under the weight of its own complexity...
The real problem is that the plans freeze the system in aspic at a time when the market and new technology are producing dramatic changes. The prices (we are not allowed to call them subsidies) represent corporate welfare on a very big scale – a transfer of wealth from consumers to suppliers which means that those who win the lobbying battle will be celebrating for decades to come.
With the roll-call of ministers responsible for DECC including Ed Miliband, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey, that the policy should by turns be corrupt, incompetent, and risible is hardly surprising. Its collapse cannot come a moment too soon. Nevertheless, it's hard to see the coalition (or indeed HM Opposition) being able to pull a more coherent alternative out of the bag: they have painted themselves into a corner with their green rhetoric.