The Economist magazine, a British newsweekly, greeted the big electricity blackout in North America with one of those condescending European editorials, usually written in French. This one ran under the headline “How to keep the lights on.”

“The Bush administration and Congress need to rethink how the country’s electricity is governed. As they do so, they should study lessons from Britain and other countries that have forged ahead more successfully in energy liberalization,” the Economist said. “America’s so-called energy ‘deregulation’ has increased the flow of power through the grid but given little incentive for investors to upgrade the grid itself. In contrast, Britain’s system gave strong incentives to the grid operator, National Grid, to invest; in relative terms, the company has spent ten times as much to upgrade the power grid in England and Wales as its counterparts in America did in the 1990s.”

The Economist went on to speak of “another lesson for America from across the Atlantic,” regarding the appropriate level of regulation. “The right balance is not easy to strike, but it is not impossible: Britain’s robust approach to energy regulation has cut prices, improved choice and yet ensured secure supply.”

Well, the poor fellows at the Economist must have choked on their jellied eel when the lights went out in London yesterday. It seems that Britain, with its “right balance,” “secure supply,” and “lessons” that the Bush administration and Congress “should study,” lost power for 40 minutes at the height of the evening rush hour, leaving commuters stranded in London’s Underground. An energy company spokesman was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that, as the AP paraphrased it, “the problem originated in two high-voltage lines belonging to the national power grid that help supply the Wimbledon area of southwest London.”