What Marine Le Pen could do to your electricity bill

Britain now imports more power from France than it generates from every solar panel in the country, and the arrangement governing that trade expires eighteen days before France votes. The bad news is not the scenario everyone reaches for.

Sep 01, 2026

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Editorial cartoon: Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella stand on the French coast at an ornate fuse box marked EXPORTATIONS, with switches labelled 5%, 20%, 50% and 100% — the 5% switch thrown and its cable sparking. A calendar reads AVRIL 2027 and a plaque PRIX FRANÇAIS €50/MWh. Four subsea cables cross the Channel to England, where Ed Miliband sits beside a CLEAN POWER 2030 target, Andy Burnham sits on a crate with boxes marked BLACKOUTS and 2029 RE-ELECTION, a white elephant in a Union Jack blanket stands at SIZEWELL C, and a lone EDF workman props up the half-built dome at HINKLEY POINT C, £16bn TO GO

In 2025 Great Britain imported 21.9 terawatt-hours of electricity from France. That is 9.3% of everything the transmission system supplied, arriving down three cables with a combined capacity of 4 GW. So far in 2026 the share is 10.3%, and power has flowed from France to Britain in 96% of all half-hours.

Some ways to feel the size of that. It is 61% of what the entire British nuclear fleet generated last year. It is more than every solar panel in the country produced — 19.8 TWh of GB solar against 21.9 TWh of French imports. And it is 84% of the output Hinkley Point C is designed to deliver — a station costing something like £35bn in 2015 prices to build, and not expected before 2030.

This is not a trading relationship any more. It is a supply.

What Marine Le Pen could do to your electricity bill

Britain now imports more power from France than it generates from every solar panel in the country, and the arrangement governing that trade expires eighteen days before France votes. The bad news is not the scenario everyone reaches for.

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