Dependent upon who we decide to listen to we’re told that somewhere between many, most and all of the people would like to see the utilities renationalised. This might well not be a good idea. As our examplar we’ve Stornoway. An area sufficiently remote that it has only the one energy supplier.

You know, a place with, inside our national at least vaguely competitive market, that monopoly that nationalisation would bring:

Smith says that every year he called his supplier, Scottish Gas, to get a better deal, and each time was told that there was only one standard tariff in his area.

Their predicament highlights the obstacles faced by energy customers who want to switch, despite rules to open up competition.

The Smiths, and some other residents in the Scottish town of Stornoway, have been trapped on a single, pricey, standard tariff for years after wrongly being told they neither qualify for cheaper deals nor have the option of changing providers, because Centrica – which owns British and Scottish Gas, and supplies one third of British households – is the only gas supplier to the island.

As we continually point out it is that very competition between suppliers which lowers prices and thereby insists that suppliers are unable to exploit consumes over much. And as we see here in the absence of such competition there is the claim of over much exploitation.

At which point there’s not a great deal left to the case that we should insist upon the one monopoly supplying all the tens of millions of us in order for us to gain a better deal, is there?