BE seems to have escaped worst of the fallout over nuclear industry's future

The Scottish company was expected to be a major beneficiary of the plan to build and run a new generation of nuclear power plants and yet the embarrassing slapdown for the government saw BE's shares close up 1.6 per cent, or 6.5p, at 399.5p.

This suggests that investors believe the gnashing of teeth in Whitehall and the nuclear industry is overdone.

It is the flawed process of consultation on the nuclear plans that has irked the High Court rather than the nuclear aim itself.

The government is bound to rush to reassure commercial investors that this is the case, and that it will press ahead with its nuclear plans.

It is still a black eye, though, for a government that is looking swayingly accident-prone.

Mr Justice Sullivan said the consultation the government did before deciding to back building new nuclear power stations was "misleading", "seriously flawed" and "procedurally unfair". Critics would say this is resonant of the Blairite case for going to war in Iraq.

The judge said the consultation was uninformed by material facts such as the economic argument for constructing nuclear plants and the arrangements for disposal of nuclear waster. A bit of an oversight. Greenpeace (who brought the legal challenge) 2 New Labour 0.

By this time the government was hoping the nuclear debate was all over bar the shouting. Now it is orange alert.

Instead of an imminent energy white paper to pave the way for the new stations, the Department of Trade and Industry has to launch a new consultation covering the areas that were botched in the "shadow" consultation.

Whitehall is letting electricity generators and other investors in the plan know that the embarrassing legal hold-up will not derail planning and licensing reforms to speed up the building of new nuclear plants.

That is helping to keep the BE share price steady. The odds are still that the expansion of Britain's nuclear industry will go ahead.

Perhaps fortuitously, the increasing concerns of security of energy supply from the likes of Russia and the Middle East are playing into the hands of the nuclear lobby.

To have over 20 per cent of the UK's supplies coming from nuclear power and not subject to sabre-rattling geopolitics is undoubtedly a form of reassurance in an era of energy nationalism.

But it makes it all the more important the government does not drop the ball so clumsily when trying to take the court of public opinion with it on such a contentious subject.

Not for the first - or second - time, the government has seemed to make its mind up on policy and then been both cavalier and casual about gaining support for it. Conviction above competence.

A decision on nuclear power is too important to be a valedictory example of sofa government.

Wheels are turning

BUS and train company shares have been decent performers in the past few years.

The trick has been steady earnings from a highly defensive sector like buses, allied to a steady recovery in rail operations from the nadir of the industry following the fatal crashes at Paddington, Hatfield and Potters Bar between 1999 and 2002.

Go-Ahead may have seen its shares edge down 10p to 2,340p yesterday, but that was largely profit-taking after what has been a very strong run.

Yesterday evening's price compares with a 52-week low at Go-Ahead of 1,629p as the pace has been relentlessly upwards.

There was little in yesterday's interim statement to indicate a reversal of this recent trend, with profits up 17 per cent at 51 million and revenues surging on the back of a big improvement in rail-passenger numbers. The interim dividend is hoisted an impressive 28 per cent.

Fuel costs are also beginning to reduce at the transport groups after hitting highs in the past couple of years, and Go-Ahead also has plans for a series of bolt-on operations ranging from buses to its aviation division.

The wheels are turning.

Momentum building

CRITICAL momentum is building against private equity.

Some, particularly the unions, believe the sector's players are asset-strippers by another name, a Hanson for the Noughties.

But even those who don't believe private equity is the new unacceptable face of capitalism are beginning to suspect it is far too big, influential and potentially damaging to operate uncurbed.

The constraints are unlikely to be on the complex financial arithmetic private equity uses to make its "turn" on deals.

There is nothing illegal in that. The use of bond market IOUs to finance takeovers, using the cash flows of the target to pay off the high rates of interest, are nothing new. But the call for greater transparency about the workings of private equity is likely to grow.

That should not be resisted by the industry. It is becoming the bad guy on the block, and the only way to address that is to open up more about the way it operates, the strategic objectives it has and, above all, the way it is financed. Greater transparency will not make private equity liked, but it might make it less distrusted.

Suspicion thrives in the dark.