http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28869228

Yeah, right.

Political party promises something that sounds good but in practice will do nothing.

Next week we investigate to see "is the Pope Catholic? "

So they're planning on introducing powers that already exist and a new regulator that will have the same role as the current one?
Genius.

Surely the response to this one is "Energy firms pledge to turn off power stations and make thousands of people redundant if they lose their licences?"
Idiots.

You really think somebody else wouldn't want to sell those people electricity and that we're so over-supplied with qualified and experienced electricity supply staff that those people made redundant wouldn't be able to work for them instead? And that the old company wouldn't sell the new one the generating capacity rather than shut it down at a humungous loss?

If the licence were withdrawn, one company would lose and one would win. In the game of monopoly money that is the stock market, one number would go up and another would go down. All that would actually change is the logo above the door. Corporate entities are utterly interchangeable, a fact they all desperately hope people won't realise.

Not that the current labour party has anything like the balls to actually carry the threat through anyway.

Any attempt to do so will obviously be subject to protracted legal tussling - and at the end of it, it’s likely that powers will be horribly watered down, and we’ll have another regulator with no teeth.