‘March madness’ was a tag applied with hindsight to last month’s scare provoked by the unconnected collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse. Nothing systemic there, said the wise men. But this week began with another rumble, as reputable US institutions, including State Street of Boston and the stockbroker Charles Schwab, reported large deposit outflows, while shares in others dived.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England was assessing whether to raise the state guarantee of bank deposits from its current £85,000 to avert social-media panics. But the problem is becoming circular: as interest rates rise, depositors are keener to move money around in search of higher yield. The bigger the state guarantee, the lower the risk of doing so –and the more exposed out-of-fashion banks will be to sudden outflows. No one ever knows where crowds will surge next, but this spring’s madness may not be over yet.

Not building back

I long ago stopped introducing myself as ‘Boris Johnson’s business editor’, though I believe I’m the only person on the planet ever to have held that title. Likewise, I’ve never met anyone who boasted of being a member of Johnson’s Build Back Better Business Council, established in 2021 but which, we’re told, is about to be scrapped as ‘increasingly irrelevant’ by Rishi Sunak.

To be fair, the Council’s own report included quotes from the likes of Alan Jope of Unilever and Thierry Bolloré of Jaguar Land Rover praising its efforts to advance a ‘green growth’ agenda. But the world knows (and I can attest) that Johnson had no interest in business issues; and arguably no UK government since Margaret Thatcher’s has listened to captains of industry and commerce as much as to City fat cats, many of whom also happen to be party donors.

Is Sunak different? Some say his attention is caught only by the sort of tech ventures he used to back as a California-based investor. Others raise an eyebrow at his choice of the Morgan Stanley veteran (and archetypal Davos Man) Franck Petitgas as his ‘business and investment adviser’. The sin-binned CBI no longer has a dialogue with No. 10, while ‘Business Connect’, a conflab of ministers and company chiefs hastily convened for next Monday, looks like a patching-up job after the pain caused by the recent Budget.

One way or another, Conservatives need to do a lot more building back before the mainstream of UK business decides that Starmer’s Labour is a better bet.

Nuclear lessons

There are several lessons for UK energy security from the coming into commercial service of Olkiluoto 3. Finland’s first new nuclear power plant since 1982 is (according to operator TVO) its ‘greatest climate act’. While the Germans – sticking doggedly to the anti-nuclear policy that left them so exposed to Russian energy supplies – chose the same day, 16 April, to unplug their last three reactors, Finland is now ‘almost self-sufficient in energy’ and looking forward to an era of stable prices. The new facility should run for 60 years and, reassuringly to those worried about spent nuclear fuel, it sits alongside a network of tunnels being bored deep in the bedrock as a safe repository.

Not surprisingly, nuclear power has an 83 per cent approval rating among Finns. Yet this flagship took 14 years beyond its original four-year timetable to complete, having suffered endless disputes with its French and German contractors, and ballooned in cost from first estimates of €3 billion to a final €11 billion-plus. Nuclear power remains the only viable answer to our own baseload energy gap, but every example elsewhere reminds us how difficult it is to deliver.

Closed on Mondays

France is a very fine country – I thought, as I motored to the Dordogne and back over Easter – but how right President Macron was to press home his controversial retirement-age reform, signed into law last week. Leaving behind striking doctors, failed ‘smart motorways’ and unfilled potholes, I whizzed through the queue-less Eurotunnel into a land of politesse and high public investment (and, of course, a penchant for violent protest, though I saw none) where British expats praise everything from the comprehensiveness of healthcare to the efficiency of retail banking. But as longevity rises, how can any nation seriously claim it’s entitled to stop work at 62?

Even Macron’s imposition of two more years’ toil clearly won’t solve the imbalance between rising pensioner numbers and shortage of productive workers. One result is that most of France now shuts down on Mondays, creating an extra hole in economic output – and an irritation for travellers.

This week’s restaurant tip, Le Bistronome, was the only place I could find to eat on Easter Monday at Montreuil-sur-Mer. Its stuffed veal shoulder was succulent, but guess what: it closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Night-train romance

Other things the French do well these days include television drama (Paris Police 1905) and talk radio. On a long, dull section of autoroute I was charmed by a discussion of the romance of rail travel – ‘le train, c’est un voyage; l’avion, c’est un deplacement’ – and the coming launch of Midnight Trains, a deluxe sleeper network radiating from Paris across Europe. Also in the offing, I discover, is the Good Night Train from Brussels to Berlin. If low-carbon ventures such as these flourish as short-haul flying withers, might we see a revival of the never-started Eurostar overnight service from York to the continent?

What bliss that would be – if it’s not blocked by post-Brexit border bureaucracy. The sublime Venice-Simplon-Orient Express, I note, is suspending its London-to-Paris leg ‘ahead of the introduction of enhanced biometric passport controls’.