see url:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/05/french-power-threat-leaves-britain-facing-nuclear-option/
Looks like the UK will have to expand its nuclear option to create an
independent home electric power grid. We import 7% of French nuclear
power every year and it is continuing to rise...
Quote<<<
French ceased to be the lingua franca of diplomacy decades ago as
Paris’s influence in the world waned. Still, it’s a shock to see Brexit
and the pandemic turn France into Europe’s enfant terrible.
Stung by another surge in Covid cases, widespread criticism of its
sluggish vaccine programme, and with opinion polls giving Marine Le Pen
an outside chance of an earthquake election victory next year, Macron’s
cabinet can no longer be trusted to behave properly on the international
stage.
After its outrageous threat to block vaccine exports to the UK, the
French government has stooped to a new low as a row over post-Brexit
fishing rights deepens.
Having previously threatened to block UK financial firms from operating
in Europe if Britain does not give French fisherman access to British
waters, France is now threatening to cut off electricity supplies to
Jersey over the new licensing regime for fishing off the island’s coast.
It’s the sort of desperate and disproportionate act you would expect
from a sworn enemy of the West like Vladimir Putin, not one of our
oldest and closest European allies. Indeed, when Russia invaded Crimea
in 2014, it halted gas supplies to the Ukraine as part of the dispute.
Still, no one really expects the French to follow through with its
intimidation tactics, even if relations are depressingly low. A warning
of “retaliatory measures” from French Maritime Minister Annick Girardin
will be treated as a hollow threat from a government desperate to cover
up for multiple failures during a crisis.
Nevertheless, the mere fact that a foreign territory could petulantly
flick a switch and plunge part of the British isles into darkness should
serve as a wake-up call for the UK and energy policy in a post-Brexit world.
In a bid to drive polluting fossil fuels out of the energy system, the
government has piled into renewables with clean power generating more
electricity than gas and coal last year, for the first time ever.
>>>End of Quote
