Depending on whose fault it eventually turns out to be, this was a power cut in just the wrong – or right – place. As Britain’s biggest airport, Europe’s main gateway to the Americas, and the apple of Rachel Reeves’s eye for growth, Heathrow’s shutdown gave a supersized significance to a substation fire.
Some were quickly out of the blocks to question the creaking state of national infrastructure. Where were the back-up systems – or indeed the further failsafes when the back-ups went up in smoke?
