Chris Huhne has gone nuclear. Mr Huhne used to say: “Ministers must stop the side-show of new nuclear power stations now.” But in those days Mr Huhne was a Liberal Democrat opposition spokesman, which meant he thought we could cut our emissions by relying on wind, wave and tidal power, together with carbon capture and storage.
How caustic Mr Huhne used to be about the people who built nuclear power stations: “The nuclear industry’s key skill over the past half-century has not been generating electricity, but extracting lashings of taxpayers’ money.”
Yet now that Mr Huhne is Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, he has decided to promote the building of nuclear power stations, paid for with lashings of electricity consumers’ money.
Most people in the Commons seemed to agree with Mr Huhne that this is the right thing to do. From the Opposition front bench, Meg Hillier supported him.
Only the Labour awkward squad tried to remind Mr Huhne of his former life, with Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport West) asking: “On what day in May was he bewitched by the Pied Piper of nuclear power?”
Kevin Brennan (Lab, Cardiff West) pointed out that there would be “no shortage of wind or gas” as long as Mr Huhne was around. It is true that the Energy Secretary is never at a loss for words, and enjoys demonstrating at some length his mastery of whatever topic happens to be under discussion. His sense of his own intellectual supremacy permits him to smile in a genial way at the puny efforts of lesser men to disconcert him.
How caustic Mr Huhne used to be about the people who built nuclear power stations: “The nuclear industry’s key skill over the past half-century has not been generating electricity, but extracting lashings of taxpayers’ money.”
Yet now that Mr Huhne is Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, he has decided to promote the building of nuclear power stations, paid for with lashings of electricity consumers’ money.
Most people in the Commons seemed to agree with Mr Huhne that this is the right thing to do. From the Opposition front bench, Meg Hillier supported him.
Only the Labour awkward squad tried to remind Mr Huhne of his former life, with Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport West) asking: “On what day in May was he bewitched by the Pied Piper of nuclear power?”
Kevin Brennan (Lab, Cardiff West) pointed out that there would be “no shortage of wind or gas” as long as Mr Huhne was around. It is true that the Energy Secretary is never at a loss for words, and enjoys demonstrating at some length his mastery of whatever topic happens to be under discussion. His sense of his own intellectual supremacy permits him to smile in a genial way at the puny efforts of lesser men to disconcert him.
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