France really feels like they're building towards serious trouble in the near future. The gap between the discounted electricity costs paid by consumers and the actual underlying wholesale prices is only widening (to the point I think they may even have the lowest consumer costs and highest wholesale prices in Europe, or at least not far off), and that basically all has to be subsidised by the government using debt. They're also part of the Eurozone which is founded on common agreements on government debt, and they're at twice the debt cap and rising. The general consensus is that they cannot stop doing this without serious civil unrest and likely widespread rioting which seems well founded in past events. Energy prices are not the only problem - they have more generous retirement policies than other countries, for example - but changing those other things is just as intolerable.

Privatizing everything is great when things are going well. When the shit hits the fan it's nice for elected representatives to be able to force essential utilities to lose money.

Ah, but what many might not grasp about (British) politics is that when the S.H.T.F it is traditional for the UK to vote in the 'other lot' (be that Labour or Conservatives) since the current lot 'are a useless bunch of twats'. This has the advantage of the 'new' government being able to blame all the current problems on the 'old lot'.

Rinse and Repeat ad infinitum