Profit has become a dirty word when it comes to fuel and banks It's hard to believe, I know, but even the European Union may have gained itself a brownie point or two in British public opinion with its crackdown on banker bonuses. That this act of blatant interference threatens real, particular and vindictive harm to British economic interests scarcely seems to matter, provided it sticks it to the bankers. Further marginalisation of one of the country's biggest industries seems but a small price to pay for this easy, populist win. Now these are difficult points to argue in today's environment. More than a decade of banking excess has brought much of the developed world to its knees, while British households are facing the biggest squeeze in disposable income since the 1920s. Am I not in danger of trying to defend the indefensible? If you destroy the flexibility in City pay that the bonus system allows, replacing it with some kind of European-determined incomes policy, the business will simply go elsewhere. It won't stop the madness of finance, it will merely offshore it to more accommodative homes in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, while Britain will be very much the poorer for it. All these other places would kill to have what London has developed over the past 30 years. Europe seems determined to deliver it to them on a plate. As for the profits of Britain's privatised energy industry, what are critics really trying to say here? That energy should be treated as a form of welfare? It is admittedly just a utility business, but to regard energy as a household right that should be delivered at no profit to the provider is simply absurd. You might as well apply the same argument to food. As it happens, Centrica's operating margin is about the same as Tesco's, yet few would argue that Britain's biggest food retailer should be deprived of its profits. For energy, it seems to be different. The moment anyone declares a profit, they get a torrent of abuse which refuses to engage in reasonable debate. It is small wonder that the Government is struggling to persuade anyone to finance new nuclear power stations, or any other form of generating capacity for that matter. Markets no longer trust governments to honour rate-of-return commitments. This is essentially making the industry "uninvestible" at a time when governments, with stretched fiscal positions, desperately need the private sector to finance energy renewal. A fifth of Britain's ageing coal and nuclear-generating capacity is due to be decommissioned over the next seven years, with little in the way of committed investment agreed to take its place. Even the fallback position of filling the hole with more gas-fired stations, which can be quickly brought on stream relatively cheaply, seems to be in jeopardy. Uncertainty over energy policy is causing operators to put investment in new plant on hold. All this leads to a rather unfortunate conclusion. If the private sector won't invest in energy infrastructure at a politically acceptable price, then the Government, bust though it may be, must do so instead. Yet to go this route ignores the lessons of the past. Rewind to the 1970s again, and you find a publicly owned utilities sector that was profoundly more starved of investment than the privately owned one today. This was particularly the case with the water industry, but it was also partially true of gas and electricity. Publicly owned utilities were treated like milch cows by a revenue-hungry Treasury, and suffered accordingly. Privatisation drove huge gains in efficiency and has helped deliver some of the lowest gas and electricity prices in Europe. If turning back the clock is what fires you up, then yes indeed, let's reverse 30 years of Thatcherite reform. Just don't expect a more prosperous economy as a result.