Lost in space and a broken energy market: blame it on the obsession with a small state | Will Hutton

The French takeover of a satellite company shows we're not learning from the current crisis

Twenty-two years in and it's already obvious that this century is demanding challenges and responses for which the British Tory mindset, with one or two honourable exceptions, is wholly unprepared. This century does not require a small state - it requires an agile state. More years of denial and the UK will be in very serious economic and social trouble.

Last week came a vignette of small-state stupidity, ceding a major area of 21st-century economic activity to France and undermining our national security - with close observers believing that no minister even knew the magnitude of their crassness. I speak of the merger, on French terms, of the formerly British-controlled space company OneWeb with France's Eutelsat, turbo-boosting the EU space effort. These Brexiters are remarkably incompetent at doing Brexit. But then incompetence comes with the territory.

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