Electricity was different. It always is. As Lenin said: "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." Perhaps Ralph Miliband passed this thought on to Ed.

The Thatcher and Major governments which privatised the electricity supply industry were wary of getting things wrong, and in the end were too cautious. They fostered an oligopoly, with the Big Six — EDF, E.ON, nPower/RWE, Scottish Power, SSE and British Gas/Centrica — organised as vertically integrated generator/suppliers. Most of the electricity generated by the Big Six is transferred directly to their supply arms at prices indirectly set by the gas market (gas is the marginal fuel in generation). There is little competition at wholesale level and thus no incentive to compete with each other effectively at retail level.

There is a simple solution to this problem: to require all the output of every generating station to be auctioned. This would increase competition in the wholesale market, driving down prices, and break the vertical integration that bedevils the retail sector. 

There are signs that the government and, interestingly, the Labour shadow minister Caroline Flint, understand the potential in cutting this Gordian knot. It is even possible that the power to order this rearrangement is hidden away in the new DECC toolkit.

One consequence of requiring all generated electricity to be auctioned would almost certainly be to reduce the wholesale electricity price. Most people might welcome that, but it would prove embarrassing for the government. The reason is that this would make the new CfDs even more expensive for the consumer than they appear today.